Podcasts about Merck

From the BBC World Service: Pharmaceutical giant Merck has scrapped plans worth more than $1 billion to expand its operations in the United Kingdom, blaming a lack of government support. It's the latest pharmaceutical company to curb investments there. Also, Mexico plans to slap tariffs of up to 50% on cars from China and other Asian countries. And, there's a warning from the World Health Organization that workers worldwide need better protection from extreme heat.

From the BBC World Service: Pharmaceutical giant Merck has scrapped plans worth more than $1 billion to expand its operations in the United Kingdom, blaming a lack of government support. It's the latest pharmaceutical company to curb investments there. Also, Mexico plans to slap tariffs of up to 50% on cars from China and other Asian countries. And, there's a warning from the World Health Organization that workers worldwide need better protection from extreme heat.

Conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead, military analysts are worried about Nato's response to a Russian drone attack, and US drugmaker Merck has scrapped a £1bn London research centre. Plus, investors have raised a record amount this year off “Bowie bonds”. Mentioned in this podcast:Donald Trump ally Charlie Kirk shot dead in UtahWhat is Vladimir Putin's game plan against Nato's eastern flank?Merck slams UK as it scraps £1bn London drug research centre‘Bowie bonds' go mainstream as Wall Street chases returnsEmail Swamp Notes with your questionsToday's FT News Briefing was produced by Fiona Symon, Katya Kumkova and Sonja Hutson. Additional help from Kelly Garry and Michael Lello. The FT's acting co-head of audio is Topher Forhecz. The show's theme music is by Metaphor Music.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will Bain finds out why US drugmaker Merck has abandoned its £1billion research centre in London, laying of more than a hundred jobs. We'll have the latest on the cyber attack affecting Jaguar Land Rover. And as London Tube strikes enter another day, we'll take a look at the impact on businesses - both the good and the bad.

Author, Boomer, and CEO of Purpose Linked Consulting, Alaina Love, is a nationally recognized leadership coach and purpose expert, helping people lead better lives for more than 20 years. Her book, Permission to Be You: Discover Your Purpose and Passions to Bring Your Best Self to Everything—and Everyone, just launched and reveals the power of passion-centered living to bring clarity and fulfillment to work, relationships, and life's biggest transitions. Love was formerly a research scientist and executive director of global human resources at Merck & Co., Inc. She has served as a leadership columnist for Bloomberg Business Week, The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, and SmartBrief.

Most believe transformation begins with the latest tech stack or AI use case.The assumption? If you move fast and automate early, you'll outpace the market.But that belief can quietly derail even the best initiatives.In reality, starting with expensive technology layered on top of a poor process doesn't always accelerate change—it can even multiply dysfunction. As John puts it (a phrase that has stuck with him for years which he originally heard at a conference):PP + ET = EPPPoor Process + Expensive Technology = Expensive Poor Process.Real transformation demands a shift in mindset:Before aligning on tools, align on the problem. Get obsessed with understanding it. Involve stakeholders in mapping it. Only then will your solution earn buy-in—from boardroom to end user.John Adjami, IT Business Partner at Merck, shares how this problem-first approach helped him lead 50+ initiatives across global procurement, finance, and shared services—without losing trust, focus, or momentum.

Merck Animal Health researcher, Chris Beasley says their new Hyper InfusiO2n solutions helps salmon find the fish ladders with water flows supplied with stable, dissolved oxygen.

Dr. Pedro Barata and Dr. Rana McKay discuss the integration of innovative advances in molecular imaging and therapeutics to personalize treatment for patients with renal cell and urothelial carcinomas. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Pedro Barata: Hello, I'm Dr. Pedro Barata, your guest host of By the Book, a podcast series featuring insightful conversations between authors and editors of the ASCO Educational Book. I'm a medical oncologist at University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center and an associate professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I'm also an associate editor of the ASCO Educational Book. Now, we all know the field of genitourinary cancers (GU) is evolving quite rapidly, and we have new innovations in molecular imaging as well as targeted therapeutics. Today's episode will be exploring novel approaches that are transforming the management of renal cell and urothelial carcinomas and also their potential to offer a more personalized treatment to patients. For that, joining for today's discussion is Dr. Rana McKay, a GU medical oncologist and professor at University of California San Diego. Dr. McKay will discuss her recently published article titled, “Emerging Paradigms in Genitourinary Cancers: Integrating Molecular Imaging, Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-Targeted Therapies, and Antibody-Drug Conjugates in Renal Cell and Urothelial Carcinomas.”  Our full disclosures are available in the transcript of this episode.  And with that, Rana McKay, great to have you on the podcast today. Dr. Rana McKay: Oh, thank you so much, Dr. Barata. It's really wonderful to be here with you. So, thanks for hosting. Dr. Pedro Barata: No, thanks for taking the time, and I'm looking forward to this conversation. And by the way, let me start by saying congrats on a great article in the Educational Book. Really super helpful paper. I'm recommending it to a lot of the residents and fellows at my own institution. I would like to first ask you to kind of give our listeners some context of how novel approaches in the molecular imaging as well as targeted therapeutics are actually changing the way we're managing patients with GU, but specifically with renal cell carcinoma and urothelial carcinoma. So, what are the areas you would call out as like being big areas for innovation in this context, and why are they important? Dr. Rana McKay: Very good question. And I think this is really what this article highlights. It highlights where are we going from an imaging diagnostics standpoint? Where are we going from a therapeutic standpoint? And I think if we have to step back, from the standpoint of diagnostics, we've seen PET imaging really transform diagnostics in prostate cancer with the advent of PSMA PET imaging, and now PSMA PET imaging is used as a biomarker for selection for theranostics therapy. And so, we're starting to see that enter into the RCC landscape, enter into the urothelial cancer landscape to a lesser extent. And I think it's going to potentially be transformative as these tools get more refined. I think when we think about therapeutics, what's been transformative most recently in the renal cell carcinoma landscape has been the advent of HIF2α inhibition to improve outcomes for patients. And we have seen the approval of belzutifan most recently that has reshaped the landscape. And now there's other HIF2α inhibitors that are being developed that are going to be further important as they get refined. And lastly, I think when we think about urothelial carcinoma, the greatest transformation to treatment in that context has been the displacement of cisplatin and platinum-based chemotherapy as a frontline standard with the combination of enfortumab vedotin plus pembrolizumab. And we've seen antibody-drug conjugates really reshape treatment and tremendously improve outcomes for patients. So, I think those are the three key areas of interest. Dr. Pedro Barata: So with that, let's focus first on the imaging and then we'll get to the therapeutic area. So, we know there's been a paradigm shift, really, when prostate-specific targets emerged as tracers for PET scanning. And so, we now commonly use prostate-specific membrane antigen, or PSMA-based PET scanning, and really transform how we manage prostate cancer. Now, it appears that we're kind of seeing a similar wave in renal cell carcinoma with the new radiotracer against the target carbonic anhydrase IX. What can you tell us about this? And is this going to be available to us anytime soon? And how do you think that might potentially change the way we're managing patients with RCC today? Dr. Rana McKay: First, I'll step back and say that in the context of PSMA PET imaging, we have actually been able to better understand RCC as well. So, we know that PSMA is expressed in the neovasculature of tumors, and it can actually be used to detect renal cell carcinoma tumors. It has a detection rate of about 84% when used for detection. And so, you know, I don't think it's just restricted to carbonic anhydrase IX, but we will talk about that. So, PSMA expressed in the neovasculature has a detection rate of around 84%, particularly if we're looking at clear cell RCC. CAlX is overexpressed in clear cell RCC, and it's actually used in diagnosing renal cell carcinoma when we think of CAlX IHC for diagnosing clear cell RCC. And now there are CAlX PET tracers. The first foray was with the ZIRCON study that was actually an interestingly designed study because it was designed to detect the likelihood of PET imaging to identify clear cell RCC. So, it was actually used in the early diagnostics setting when somebody presents with a renal mass to discriminate that renal mass from a clear cell versus a non-clear cell, and it was a positive study. But when I think about the potential application for these agents, you know, I think about the entire landscape of renal cell carcinoma. This is a disease that we do treat with metastasis-directed therapy. We have certainly seen patients who've undergone metastasectomy have long, durable remissions from such an approach. And I think if we can detect very early onset oligometastatic disease where a metastasis-directed therapy or SABR could be introduced - obviously tested in a trial to demonstrate its efficacy - I think it could potentially be transformative. Dr. Pedro Barata: Wonderful. It's a great summary, and I should highlight you are involved in some of those ongoing studies testing the performance of this specific PET scanning for RCC against conventional imaging, right? And to remind the listeners, thus far, for the most part, we don't really do FDG-PET for RCC. There are some specific cases we do, but in general, they're not a standard scanning. But maybe that will change in the future. Maybe RCC will have their own PSMA-PET. And to your point, there's also emerging data about the role of PSMA-PET scanning in RCC as well, as you very elegantly summarized. Wonderful. So, let me shift gears a little bit because you did, in your introduction, you did highlight a novel MOA that we have in renal cell carcinoma, approved for use, initially for VHL disease, and after that for sporadic clear cell renal cell carcinoma. We're talking about hypoxia-inducible factor 2-alpha inhibitors, or HIF2α inhibitors, such as belzutifan. But there's also others coming up. So, as a way to kind of summarize that, what can you tell us about this breakthrough in terms of therapeutic class, this MOA that got to our toolbox of options for patients with advanced RCC? Tell us a little bit what is being utilized currently in the management of advanced RCC. And where do you see the future going, as far as, is it moving early on? Is it getting monotherapy versus combinations? Maybe other therapies? What are your thoughts about that? What can you tell us about it? Dr. Rana McKay: Belzutifan is a first-in-class HIF2α inhibitor that really established clinical validation for HIF2α as a therapeutic target. When we think about the activity of this agent, the pivotal LITESPARK-005 trial really led to the approval of belzutifan in patients who were really heavily pretreated. It was patients who had received prior IO therapy, patients who had received prior VEGF-targeted therapy. And in the context of this study, we saw a median PFS of 5.6 months, and there did seem to be a tail on the curve when you looked at the 12-month PFS rate with belzutifan. It was 33.7% compared to 17.6% with everolimus. And then when we look at the response rate, it was higher with belzutifan on the order of 22-23%, and very low with everolimus, as we've previously seen. I think one of the Achilles heels of this regimen is the primary PD rate, which was 34% when used in later line. There are multiple studies that are testing belzutifan in combination across the treatment landscape. So, we have LITESPARK-011, which is looking at the combination of belzutifan plus lenvatinib in the second-line setting. We've got the MK-012 [LITESPARK-012] study, which is looking at belzutifan in various combinations in the frontline setting. So there is a combination with IO plus belzutifan. And so this is also being looked at in that context. And then we also have the LITESPARK-022 study, which is looking at pembrolizumab with belzutifan in the adjuvant setting. So there's a series of studies that will be exploring belzutifan really across the treatment landscape. Many of these studies in combination. Additionally, there are other HIF2α inhibitors that are being developed. We have casdatifan, which is another very potent HIF2α inhibitor. You know, I think pharmacologically, these are different agents. There's a different half-life, different dosing. What is going to be the recommended phase 3 dose for both agents, the EPO suppression levels, the degree of EPO suppression, and sustainability of EPO suppression is very different. So, I think we've seen data from casdatifan from the ARC-20 trial from monotherapy with a respectable response rate, over 30%, primary PD rate hovering just around 10%.  And then we've also seen data of the combination of casdatifan with cabozantinib as well that were recently presented this year. And that agent is also being tested across the spectrum of RCC. It's being looked at in combination with cabozantinib in the PEAK-1 study, and actually just at the KCRS (Kidney Cancer Research Summit), we saw the unveiling of the eVOLVE-RCC trial, which is going to be looking at a volrustomig, which is a PD-1/CTLA-4 inhibitor plus casdatifan compared to nivo-ipi in the frontline setting.  So, we're going to see some competition in this space of the HIF2α inhibitors. I think when we think of mechanism of action in that these are very potent, not a lot of off-target activity, and they target a driver mutation in the disease. And that driver mutation happens very early in the pathogenesis. These are going to be positioned much earlier in the treatment landscape. Dr. Pedro Barata: All these studies, as you're saying, look really promising. And when we talk about them, you mentioned a lot of combinations. And to me, when I think of these agents, it makes a lot of sense to combine because there's not a lot of overlapping toxicities, if you will. But perhaps for some of our listeners, who have not used HIF2α inhibitors in practice yet, and they might be thinking about that, what can you tell us about the safety profile? How do you present it to your patients, and how do you handle things like hypoxia or anemia? How do you walk through the safety profile and tolerability profile of those agents like belzutifan? Dr. Rana McKay: I think these drugs are very different than your traditional TKIs, and they don't cause the classic symptoms that are associated with traditional TKIs that many of us are very familiar with like the rash, hand-foot syndrome, hypertension, diarrhea. And honestly, these are very nuanced symptoms that patients really struggle with the chronicity of being on a chronic daily TKI. The three key side effects that I warn patients about with HIF2α inhibitors are: (1) fatigue; (2) anemia; and (3) hypoxia and dysregulation in the ability to sense oxygen levels. And so, many of these side effects - actually, all of them - are very dose-dependent. They can be very well-managed. So, we can start off with the anemia. I think it's critically important before you even start somebody on belzutifan that you are optimizing their hemoglobin and bone marrow function. Make sure they don't have an underlying iron deficiency anemia. Make sure they don't have B12 or folate deficiency. Check for these parameters. Many patients who have kidney cancer may have some hematuria, other things where there could be some low-level blood loss. So, make sure that those are resolved or you're at least addressing them and supplementing people appropriately. I monitor anemia very closely every 3 to 4 weeks, at least, when people start on these medications. And I do initiate EPO, erythropoietin, should the anemia start to worsen. And I typically use a threshold of around 10g/dL  for implementing utilization of an EPO agent, and that's been done very safely in the context of the early studies and phase 3 studies as well. Now, with regards to the hypoxia, I think it's also important to make sure that you're selecting the appropriate individual for this treatment. People who have underlying COPD, or even those individuals who have just a very high burden of disease in their lung, lymphangitic spread, pleural effusions, maybe they're already on oxygen - that's not an ideal candidate for belzutifan. Something that very easily can be done in the clinic before you think about initiating somebody on this treatment, and has certainly been integrated into some of the trials, is just a 6-minute walk test. You know, have the patient walk around the clinic with one of the MAs, one of the nurses, put the O2 sat on [measuring oxygen saturation], make sure they're doing okay. But these side effects, like I said, are very dose-dependent. Typically, if a patient requires, if the symptoms are severe, the therapy can be discontinued and dose reduced. The standing dose is 120 mg daily, and there's two dose reductions to 80 mg and 40 mg should somebody warrant that dose modification. Dr. Pedro Barata: This is relatively new, right? Like, it was not that we're used to checking oxygen levels, right? In general, we're treating these patients, so I certainly think there's a learning curve there, and some of the points that you highlight are truly critical. And I do share many of those as well in our practice. Since I have you, I want to make sure we touch base on antibody-drug conjugates as well. It's also been a hot area, a lot of developments there. When I think of urothelial carcinoma and renal cell carcinoma, I see it a little bit different. I think perhaps in urothelial carcinoma, antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs, are somewhat established already. You already mentioned enfortumab vedotin. I might ask you to expand a little bit on that. And then in renal cell carcinoma, we have some ADCs as well that you include in your chapter, and that I would like you to tell us what's coming from that perspective. So, tell us a little bit about how do you see ADCs in general for GU tumors, particularly UC and RCC? Tell us a little bit about the complexity or perhaps the challenges you still see. At the same time, tell us about the successes. Dr. Rana McKay: Stepping back, let's just talk about like the principles and design of ADCs. So, most ADCs have three components. There's a monoclonal antibody that typically targets a cell surface antigen, which is conjugated by a linker, which is the second component, to a payload drug. And typically, that payload drug has been chemotherapy, whether it be topoisomerase or whether it be MMAE or other chemotherapeutic. We can start in the RCC space. There's been multiple antibody-drug conjugates that have been tested. There's antibody-drug conjugates to CD70, which is expressed on clear cell RCC. There's been antibody-drug conjugates to ENPP3, which is also expressed on RCC. There's antibody-drug conjugates to CDH6. And they have different payloads, like I said, whether it be topoisomerase I or other microtubule inhibitors. Now, when we think about kidney cancer, we don't treat this disease with chemotherapy. This disease is treated with immunotherapy. It is treated with treatments that target the VEGF pathway and historically has not been sensitive to chemo. So, I think even though the targets have been very exciting, we've seen very underwhelming data regarding activity, and in some context, seen increased toxicity with the ADCs. So, I think we need to tread lightly in the context of the integration and the testing of ADCs in RCC. We just came back from the KCRS meeting, and there was some very intriguing data about a c-Kit ADC that's being developed for chromophobe RCC, which is, you know, a huge unmet need, these variant tumors that really lack appropriate therapeutics. But I just caution us to tread lightly around how can we optimize the payload to make sure that the tumor that we're treating is actually sensitive to the agent that's targeting the cell kill. So, that's a little bit on the ADCs in RCC. I still think we have a long way to go and still in early testing. Now, ADCs for UC are now the standard of care. I think the prototypical agent, enfortumab vedotin, is a nectin-4-directed ADC that's conjugated to an MMAE payload and was the first ADC approved for advanced urothelial, received accelerated approval following the EV-201 trial, which was basically a multicenter, single-arm study that was investigating EV in cisplatin-ineligible patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma, and then ultimately confirmed in the EV-301 study as well. And so, that study ended up demonstrating the support superiority of EV from an overall survival standpoint, even PFS standpoint. Building on that backbone is the EV-302 study, which tested EV in combination with pembrolizumab versus platinum-based chemotherapy in the frontline setting. And that was a pivotal, landmark study that, like I said, has displaced platinum therapy as a frontline treatment for people with advanced urothelial carcinoma. And when we think about that study and the median overall survival and just how far we've come in urothelial cancer, the median OS with EV-pembro from that trial was 31 and a half months. I mean, that's just incredible. The control arm survival was 16 and a half months. The hazard ratio for OS, 0.47. I mean this is why when this data was presented, it was literally a standing ovation that lasted for several minutes because we just haven't seen data that have looked that good. And there are other antibody-drug conjugates that are being tested. We've all been involved in the saga with sacituzumab govitecan, which is a trophoblast cell surface antigen 2 (Trop-2) targeted ADC with a topoisomerase I payload. It was the second ADC to receive approval, but then that approval was subsequently withdrawn when the confirmatory phase 3 was negative, the TROPiCS-04 trial. So, approval was granted based off of the TROPHY-U-01, single-arm, phase 2 study, demonstrating a response rate of around 28% and a PFS of, you know, about 5 and a half months. But then failure to show any benefit from an OS standpoint. And I think there's a lot of controversy in the field around whether this agent still has a role in advanced urothelial carcinoma. And I think particularly for individuals who do not have molecular targets, like they're not HER2-amplified or have HER2-positivity or FGFR or other things like that. Dr. Pedro Barata: Fantastic summary, Rana. You were talking about the EV, and it came to mind that it might not be over, right, for the number of ADCs we use in clinical practice in the near future. I mean, we've seen very promising data for ADC against the HER2, right, and over-expression. It also can create some challenges, right, in the clinics because we're asking to test for HER2 expression. It's almost like, it's not exactly the same to do it in breast cancer, but it looks one more time that we're a little bit behind the breast cancer field in a lot of angles. And also has vedotin as a payload. Of course, I'm referring to disitamab vedotin, and there's very elegant data described by you in your review chapter as well. And it's going to be very interesting to see how we sequence the different ADCs, to your point as well. So, before we wrap it up, I just want to give you the opportunity to tell us if there's any area that we have not touched, any take-home points you'd like to bring up for our listeners before we call it a day. Dr. Rana McKay: Thank you so much. I have to say, you know, I was so excited at ASCO this year looking at the GU program. It was fantastic to see the progress being made, novel therapeutics that really there's a tremendous excitement about, not just in RCC and in UC, but also in prostate cancer, thinking about the integration of therapies, not just for people with refractory disease that, even though our goal is to improve survival, our likelihood of cure is low, but also thinking about how do we integrate these therapies early in the treatment landscape to enhance cure rates for patients, which is just really spectacular. We're seeing many of these agents move into the perioperative setting or in combination with radiation for localized disease. And then the special symposium on biomarkers, I mean, we've really come a long, long way. And I think that we're going to continue to evolve over the next several years. I'm super excited about where the field is going in the treatment of genitourinary malignancies. Dr. Pedro Barata: Oh, absolutely true. And I would say within the Annual Meeting, we have outstanding Educational Sessions. And just a reminder to the listeners that actually that's where the different teams or topics for the Educational Book chapters come from, from actually the educational sessions from ASCO. And your fantastic chapter is an example of that, right, focusing on advanced GU tumors. So, thank you so much, Rana, for taking the time, sharing your insights with us today on the podcast. It was a fantastic conversation as always. Dr. Rana McKay: My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Dr. Barata. Dr. Pedro Barata: Of course.  And thank you to our listeners for your time today. You will find the link to the article discussed today in the transcript of this episode. I also encourage you to check out the 2025 ASCO Educational Book. You'll find an incredible wealth of information there. It's free, available online, and you'll find, hopefully, super, super important information on the key science and issues that are shaping modern oncology, as we've heard from Dr. McKay and many other outstanding authors. So, thank you, everyone, and I hope to see you soon. Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Follow today's speakers:        Dr. Pedro Barata @PBarataMD Dr. Rana McKay @DrRanaMcKay Follow ASCO on social media:        @ASCO on X (formerly Twitter)        ASCO on Bluesky       ASCO on Facebook        ASCO on LinkedIn        Disclosures:     Dr. Pedro Barata: Stock and Other Ownership Interests: Luminate Medical Honoraria: UroToday Consulting or Advisory Role: Bayer, BMS, Pfizer, EMD Serono, Eisai, Caris Life Sciences, AstraZeneca, Exelixis, AVEO, Merck, Ipson, Astellas Medivation, Novartis, Dendreon Speakers' Bureau: AstraZeneca, Merck, Caris Life Sciences, Bayer, Pfizer/Astellas Research Funding (Inst.): Exelixis, Blue Earth, AVEO, Pfizer, Merck  Dr. Rana McKay: Consulting or Advisory Role: Janssen, Novartis, Tempus, Pfizer, Astellas Medivation, Dendreon, Bayer, Sanofi, Vividion, Calithera, Caris Life Sciences, Sorrento Therapeutics, AVEO, Seattle Genetics, Telix, Eli Lilly, Blue Earth Diagnostics, Ambrx, Sumitomo Pharma Oncology, Esiai, NeoMorph, Arcus Biosciences, Daiichi Sankyo, Exelixis, Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck, Astrazeneca, Myovant Research Funding (Inst.): Bayer, Tempus, AstraZeneca, Exelixis, Bristol Myers Squibb, Oncternal Therapeutics, Artera    

Aktien hören ist gut. Aktien kaufen ist besser. Bei unserem Partner Scalable Capital geht's unbegrenzt per Trading-Flatrate oder regelmäßig per Sparplan. Alle weiteren Infos gibt's hier: scalable.capital/oaws. Aktien + Whatsapp = Hier anmelden. Lieber als Newsletter? Geht auch. Das Buch zum Podcast? Jetzt lesen. Der Kalender zum Podcast? Jetzt kaufen. Die 8 US-Tech-Giganten werden gepusht: Von Teslas neuem Musk-Bonus, Broadcoms Beziehung mit OpenAI und dem Urteil von Alphabet. Außerdem: Robinhood, AppLovin & Emcor in S&P 500. ServiceTitan, Samsara & Guidewire performen. Spotify hat gezeigt, wie gut Musik-Streaming-Aktien funktionieren. Kann Tencent Music Entertainment (WKN: A2N7WQ) das wiederholen? Merck (WKN: 659990) ist irgendwo zwischen günstiger Bewertung, ablaufenden Patenten und riesigen Übernahmen. Diesen Podcast vom 08.09.2025, 3:00 Uhr stellt dir die Podstars GmbH (Noah Leidinger) zur Verfügung.

Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma and Biotech world. During a Senate hearing, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced criticism for spreading anti-vaccine views and breaking promises regarding vaccines. The FDA released rejection letters for companies like Lykos Therapeutics, Stealth Biotherapeutics, and Regeneron. Ousted CDC director Susan Monarez accused Kennedy of firing her for not supporting Covid-19 recommendations from an advisory panel with "antivaccine rhetoric." Hengrui Pharmaceuticals signed lucrative deals with Merck and GSK, while the FDA promised to release future Complete Response Letters promptly. In other news, Sanofi's anti-OX40 blocker failed in a Phase III study, Gilead partnered with the US State Department for low-income countries, and AC Immune announced workforce cuts. Kennedy was accused of lying during the hearing, and the FDA released a new rare disease approval framework.

Merck Animal Health researcher, Chris Beasley says their new Hyper InfusiO2n solutions helps salmon find the fish ladders with water flows supplied with stable, dissolved oxygen.

In today's episode, Stig Brodersen is talking stocks with Tobias Carlisle and Hari Ramachandra. Stig's pick is Uber, the world's largest ride-hailing company. Tobias is pitching Bath & Body Works, a category leader in home and personal fragrance. Hari's stock of choice is Merck, a pharmaceutical giant that owns the blockbuster oncology drug. IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro 02:23 - Stig's bull case for Uber (Ticker on NYSE: UBER). 17:15 - The bear case for Uber, including the regulatory risk. 58:37 - Why Hari is bullish on Merck (Ticker on NYSE: MRK). 01:12:10 - The bear case for Merck, including the “Keytruda patent cliff.” 01:17:32 - Why Toby is bullish on Bath & Body Works (Ticker on NYSE: BBWI). 01:27:10 - The bear case of Bath & Body Works, including the debt level. And so much more! Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join Clay and a select group of passionate value investors for a retreat in Big Sky, Montana. Learn more ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Join the exclusive ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Mastermind Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, Kyle, and the other community members. Stig Brodersen's Portfolio and Track record.  Listen to Shawn and Daniel's episode about Uber. Listen to Mastermind Discussion Q2, 2025 or watch the video.   Listen to Mastermind Discussion Q1, 2025 or watch the video. Tobias' podcast, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Acquirers Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Tobias' ETFs, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ZIG⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Deep⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Tobias' Acquirer's Multiple stock screener: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AcquirersMultiple.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Check out all the books mentioned and discussed in our podcast episodes ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Enjoy ad-free episodes when you subscribe to our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Premium Feed⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. NEW TO THE SHOW? Get smarter about valuing businesses in just a few minutes each week through our newsletter, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Check out our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠We Study Billionaires Starter Packs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow our official social media accounts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X (Twitter)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Finance Tool⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Enjoy exclusive perks from our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠favorite Apps and Services⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠best business podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠sponsors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SimpleMining⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HardBlock⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AnchorWatch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Human Rights Foundation⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Vanta⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Unchained⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Onramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Netsuite⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shopify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support our show by becoming a premium member! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

Dr. Paul Chirik, the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Chemistry and the Chair of the Department of Chemistry at Princeton University, researches something he calls “modern alchemy.” As many of the world's most effective chemical catalysts are made from rare and precious metals, Dr. Chirik pioneers methods to create high-performing catalysts from common, earth-abundant metals—esseintially transforming common materials into “gold.” On this exciting episode of Let's Talk Chemistry edited by Presley Vu, hosts Mehreen and Elizabeth Li dive deeper into this concept and its exciting applications in our interview with Dr. Chirik. Dr. Chirik goes on to explain how his group has used their research in collaborations with companies such as Merck and Exxon Mobile, and shares fascinating insights into the dynamics between academia and industry. We hope you enjoy!

Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal and Dr. Petros Grivas discuss innovative new intravesical therapies and other recent advances in the treatment of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: Hello and welcome. I'm Dr. Monty Pal here at the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I'm a medical oncologist and professor and vice chair of academic affairs at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles. And I'm really delighted to be your new host here. Today's episode is going to really sort of focus on an area near and dear to my heart, something I actually see in the clinics, and that's bladder cancer. We're specifically going to be discussing non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, which actually comprises about 75% of new cases. Now, in recent years, there's been a huge shift towards personalized bladder-preserving strategies, including innovative therapies and new agents that really are reducing reliance on more primitive techniques like radical cystectomy and radiation therapy. And I'm really excited about this new trend. And really at the forefront of this is one of my dear friends and colleagues, Dr. Petros Grivas. He's a professor in the Department of Medicine and Division of Hematology Oncology at the University of Washington. It's going to take a while to get through all these titles. He's taken on a bunch of new roles. He is medical director of the International Program, medical director of the Local and Regional Outreach Program, and also professor in the Clinical Research Division at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. Petros, welcome to the program. Dr. Petros Grivas: Thank you so much, Monty. It's exciting for me to be here. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: Just FYI for our audience, our disclosures are available in the transcript of this episode.  We're going to get right into it, Petros. Non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, this is a really, really challenging space. We see a lot of recurrence and progression of the disease over time, about 50% to 70% of patients do have some recurrence after initial treatment, and about 30% are ultimately going to progress on to muscle-invasive or metastatic disease. Now, I will say that when you and I were in training, non-muscle invasive bladder cancer was something that was almost relegated to the domain of the urologist, right? They would use treatments such as BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin) in a serial fashion. It was rare, I think, for you and I to really enter into this clinical space, but that's all changing, isn't it? I mean, can you maybe tell us about some of the new therapies, two or three that you're really excited about in this space? Dr. Petros Grivas: Monty, you're correct. Traditionally and conventionally, our dear friends and colleagues in urology have been managing patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. The previous term was superficial bladder cancer. Now, it has changed, to your point, to non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. And this has to do with the staging of this entity. These tumors in superficial layers of bladder cancer, not invading the muscularis propria, the muscle layer, which makes the bladder contract for urine to be expelled. As you said, these patients have been treated traditionally with intravesical BCG, one of the oldest forms of immunotherapy that was developed back in the 1970s, and this is a big milestone of immunotherapy development. However, over the years, in the last 50 years, there were not many options for patients in whom the cancers had progression or recurrence, came back after this intravesical BCG. Many of those patients were undergoing, and many of them still may be undergoing, what we call radical cystectomy, meaning removal of the bladder and the lymph nodes around the bladder. The development of newer agents over the last several years has given the patients the option of having other intravesical therapies, intravesical meaning the delivery of drugs, medications inside the bladder, aiming to preserve the bladder, keep the bladder in place. And there are many examples of those agents. Just to give you some examples, intravesical chemotherapy, chemotherapy drugs that you and me may be giving intravenously, some of them can be given inside the bladder, intravesical installation. One example of that is a combination of gemcitabine and docetaxel. These drugs are given in sequence one after the other inside the bladder, and they have seen significant efficacy, good results, again, helping patients keeping the bladder when they can for patients with what we call BCG unresponsive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. And again, there's criteria that the International Bladder Cancer Group and the FDA developed, how to define when BCG fails, when we have BCG unresponsive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: And we're actually going to get into some of the FDA requirements and development pathways and so forth. What I'm really interested in hearing, and I'm sure our audience is too, are maybe some of the new intravesical treatments that are coming around. I do think it's exciting that the gemcitabine and docetaxel go into the bladder indeed, but what are some of the top new therapies? Pick two or three that you're excited about that people should be looking out for in this intravesical space. Dr. Petros Grivas: For sure, for sure. In terms of the new up-and-coming therapies, there are a couple that come to mind. One of them is called TAR-200, T-A-R 200. This agent is actually a very interesting system. It's an intravesical delivery of a chemotherapy called gemcitabine, the one that I just mentioned a few minutes ago, that is actually being delivered through what we call a pretzel, which is like a rounded [pretzel-shaped] structure working like an osmotic pump, and that is being delivered inside the bladder intravesically by urologists. And this drug is releasing, through the osmotic release mechanism, this chemotherapeutic drug, gemcitabine, inside the bladder. And this can be replaced once every 3 weeks in the beginning. And the data so far from early-phase trials are really, really promising, showing that this agent may be potentially regulatory approved down the road. So TAR-200 is something to keep in mind. And similarly, in the same context, there is a different drug that also uses the same mechanism, and this osmotic release, this pretzel, it's just encoded with a different agent. The different agent is an FGFR inhibitor, a target therapy called erdafitinib, a drug that you and me may give in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma if they have an FGFR3 mutation or fusion. And that drug is called TAR-210. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: And can I ask you, in that setting, do you have to have an FGFR3 mutation to receive it? Or what is the context there? Dr. Petros Grivas: So for TAR-210, TAR-2-1-0, usually there is a checking to see if there is an FGFR3 mutation or fusion. And the big question, Monty, is do we have adequate tissue, right? From a limited tissue on what we call the TURBT, right, that urologists do. And now there is a lot of development in technology, for example, urine circulating tumor DNA to try to detect these mutations in the urine to see whether the patient may be eligible for this TAR-210. Both of those agents are not FDA approved, but there are significant promising clinical trials. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: So now let's go to a rapid-fire round. Give us two more agents that you're excited about in this intravesical space. What do you think? Dr. Petros Grivas: There is another one called cretostimogene. It's a long name. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: They really make these names very easy for us, don't they? Dr. Petros Grivas: They are not Greek names, Monty, I can tell you, you know. Even my Greek language is having trouble pronouncing them. The cretostimogene, it's actually almost what we call a growth factor, a GM-CSF. The actual name of this agent is CG0070. This is a replicating mechanism where GM-CSF is replicating in cells. And this agent has shown significant results again, like the TAR-200, in BCG unresponsive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. I would say very quickly, two agents that actually were recently approved and they're already available in clinical practice, is nadofaragene firadenovec, another long name. That's a non-replicating vector that has the gene of interferon alfa-2b that stimulates the immune system in the bladder. It's given once every 3 months. And the last one that was, as I mentioned, already FDA approved, it's an interleukin-15 superagonist. It's another long name, which is hard to pronounce, but I will give it a try. It's a drug that was recently actually approved also in the UK. The previous name was N-803. It's given together with BCG as a combination for BCG unresponsive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: This is a huge dilemma, I think, right? Because if you're a practicing, I'm going to say urologist for the moment, I guess the challenge is how do you decide between an IL-15 superagonist? How do you decide between a pretzel-eluting agent? How do you decide between that and maybe something that's ostensibly, I'm going to guess, cheaper, like gemcitabine and docetaxel? What's sort of the current thinking amongst urologists? Dr. Petros Grivas: Multiple factors play into our account when the decision is being made. I discuss with urologists all the time. It's not an easy decision because we do not have head-to-head comparisons between those agents. As you mentioned, intravesical chemotherapy with gemcitabine and docetaxel has been used over the years and this is the lowest cost, I would say, the cheapest option with good efficacy results. Obviously, the nadofaragene firadenovec every 3 months and the interleukin-15 superagonist, N-803, plus BCG have also been approved. The question is availability of those agents, are they available? Are they reimbursed? Cost of those agents can come into play. Frequency of administration, you know, once every 3 months versus more frequent. And of course, the individual efficacy and toxicity data, preference of the patients; sometimes the provider, the urologist, may have something that they may be more familiar with. But we lack this head-to-head comparison. Of course, I want to make sure I mention that radical cystectomy may still be the option for appropriate patients. So that complicates also the decision making and has to be individualized, customized, and personalized, taking into account all those factors. And there is not one size fitting all. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: So I think we discussed five intravesical therapies. As you point out, and you know, I'm going to get some calls about this: I think I referred to radical cystectomy as being a more primitive procedure. Not true at all. I think it's something that still is, you know, a mainstay of management in this disease space. But I guess it gets even more complicated, am I right, Petros? Because now we have systemic therapies that we can actually apply in this non-muscle invasive setting for at this point, refractory disease. Can you maybe just give us a quick two-minute primer on that? Dr. Petros Grivas: Absolutely, and systemic therapies now come into play, as you said. And a classical example of that, Monty, came from the KEYNOTE-057 trial that we published about 6 years ago. This is intravenous pembrolizumab, given intravascularly, intravenously, as opposed to the previously discussed intravesical administration of agents. Pembrolizumab was tested in that KEYNOTE-057 trial and showed efficacy about, I would say, one out of five patients, about 20%, had a complete response of the tumor in the bladder in a year after starting the treatment. Again, it's hard to compare across different agents, but obviously when we give something intravenously, there is a risk of toxicity, side effects systemically, what we call immune-related adverse events. And this can also play in the decision making, right? When you have intravesical agents versus intravascular agents, there is different toxicity profiles in terms of systemic toxicity. But intravenous pembrolizumab has been an option, FDA approved, since, if I remember, it was early 2020 when this became FDA approved. There are other agents being tested in this disease, but like atezolizumab through the SWOG study that Dr. Black and Dr. Singh led, but atezolizumab is not FDA approved for this indication. Again, this is for BCG unresponsive, high-risk, non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: So maybe teach us how it works, for instance, at an expert center like the Fred Hutch. When you see a patient with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, there's obviously the option of surgery, there's the intravesical therapies, which I imagine the urology team is still really at the helm of. But then, I guess there has to be consideration of all options. So you've got to bring up systemic therapy with agents like pembrolizumab. In that context, are you involved that early on in the conversation? Dr. Petros Grivas: That's a great discussion, Monty. Paradigm is shifting as we mentioned together. The urologists have been treating these patients and still they are the mainstay of the treaters, the managers in this disease. But medical oncologists come to play more and more, especially with the FDA approval of intravenous pembrolizumab about 5 years ago [GC1]  [KM2] . We have the concept of multidisciplinary bladder cancer clinic here at Fred Hutch and University of Washington. This happens every Tuesday morning, and we're very excited because it's a one-stop shop for the patients. We have the urologist, a medical oncologist, radiation oncologist, and experts from radiology and pathology, and we all review cases specifically with muscle-invasive bladder cancer. But every now and then, we see patients with BCG unresponsive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. And this is where we discuss and we talk to the patient about pros and cons of all those options. And that's a classic example where medical oncologists may start to see those patients and offer their input and expertise. In addition to that, sometimes we have clinical trials, we may see these patients because there are systemic agents that may be administered in this setting. We have the SunRISe trial program that includes also a systemically administered checkpoint inhibitor. So that's another example where we see patients either in the context of multi-clinic or in individual solo clinics to counsel the patients about the pros and cons of the systemically administered agents in the context of clinical trials. Usually checkpoint inhibitors are the class of agents that are being tested in this particular scenario. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: I can see a scenario where it's really going to require this sort of deep dive, much in the way that we do for prostate cancer, for instance, where the medical oncologist is involved very early on and planning out any sort of systemic therapy component of treatment or at the very least, at least spelling out those options. I think it's going to be really interesting to see what this space looks like 5 or 10 years down the road. In closing, I wanted to go through something that I think is so different in this space, at least for the time being, and that is the paradigm for FDA approval. When you and I have our fellows in the clinics, we always say, “Look, you know, the paradigm in this disease and that disease and the other disease needs to be phase 3 randomized trials, right? Big thousand patient experiences where you're testing clinical endpoints.” That's tough in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, right? Because thankfully, outcomes can actually be quite good, you know, in this setting, right? It's tough to actually estimate overall survival in some of these early-stage populations. Tell me what the current regulatory bar is, and this is a tough thing to do in 2 minutes or less but tell me where you see it headed. Dr. Petros Grivas: You alluded to that before, Monty, when I was giving the background and we talked about the regulatory approval. And I have to very quickly go back in time about 10 years ago because it's important for context that can help us in other disease types too. We had workshops with the FDA and the NCI with the help of the International Bladder Cancer Group and other colleagues. And we try to define a framework, what endpoints are meaningful for those patients in this disease. It was a multidisciplinary, multiple stakeholders meeting, where we tried to define what is important for patients. What are the available agents? What are the trial designs we can accept? And what are the meaningful endpoints that the regulatory agencies can accept for regulatory approval? And that was critical in that mission because it allowed us to design clinical trials, for example, single-arm trials in a disease where there was no standard of care. There was intravesical valrubicin and chemotherapy anthracycline that was approved for many years, but was not practically used in clinical practice, despite being approved, the valrubicin. And because of that, the FDA allowed these single-arm trials to happen. And obviously the endpoint was also discussed in that meeting. For example, for carcinoma in situ, complete response, clinical complete response, because the bladder remains intact in many patients, clinical complete response was a meaningful primary endpoint, also duration of response is also very important. So what is the durable clinical complete response in 1 year or 18 months is relevant. And when you have papillary tumors like Ta or T1 with CIS, for papillary tumors, event-free survival becomes one of the key endpoints and you look at it over time, for example, at 12 or 18 months, what is the event-free survival? So clinical complete response, duration of response, event-free survival, depending on the CIS presence or papillary tumors, I think these are endpoints that have allowed us to design those trials, get those agents approved.  Now, the question going forward, Monty, and we can close with that is, since now we have the embarrassment of riches, many more options available compared to where we were 6 and 7 years ago, is now the time to do randomized trials? And if we do randomized trials, which can be the control group? Which of those agents should be allowed to be part of the control group? These are ongoing discussions right now with the NCI, with other agencies, cooperative groups, trying to design those trials and move forward from here.[GC3]  Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: Well, it's awesome to have you here on the program so we can get some early looks into some of these conversations. I mean, clearly, you're at the table at a lot of these discussions, Petros. So I want to thank you for sharing your insights with us today. This was just tremendous. Dr. Petros Grivas: Thank you, Monty. You know, patients in the center, I just came back from the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network meeting in Washington, D.C., and we discussed all those questions, the topics you very eloquently mentioned and asked me today, and patients gave us great feedback and patients guide us in that effort. Thank you so, so much for having me and congratulations for the amazing podcast you're doing. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: Oh, cheers, Petros, thanks so much.  And thank you to the listeners who joined us today. If you really like the insights that you heard on this ASCO Daily News Podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, everyone. Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.   Find out more about today's speakers:      Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal  @montypal  Dr. Petros Grivas @PGrivasMDPhD   Follow ASCO on social media:     @ASCO on Twitter    ASCO on Bluesky   ASCO on Facebook     ASCO on LinkedIn     Disclosures:    Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal:   Speakers' Bureau: MJH Life Sciences, IntrisiQ, Peerview  Research Funding (Inst.): Exelixis, Merck, Osel, Genentech, Crispr Therapeutics, Adicet Bio, ArsenalBio, Xencor, Miyarsian Pharmaceutical  Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Crispr Therapeutics, Ipsen, Exelixis  Dr. Petros Grivas: Consulting or Advisory Role: Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, EMD Serono, Pfizer, Janssen, Roche, Astellas Pharma, Gilead Sciences, Strata Oncology, Abbvie, Bicycle Therapeutics Replimune, Daiichi Sankyo, Foundation Medicine, Bicycle Therapeutics, Eli Lilly, Urogen Pharma, Tyra Biosciences Research Funding (Inst.): Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, EMD Serono, Gilead Sciences, Acrivon Therapeutics, ALX Oncology, ALX Oncology, Genentech Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Gilead Sciences

In this episode of Data in Biotech, host Ross Katz talks with Jesper Ryge, Director of Computational Biology at Merck Germany. Jesper shares his journey from neuroscience labs to leading computational teams, offering deep insights into disease modeling, target discovery, and multi-omics integration. Discover how AI and spatial transcriptomics are shaping the future of pharma R&D. ​​What You'll Learn in This Episode >> How single-cell and spatial transcriptomics enhance disease mechanism discovery >> Why data integration and knowledge graphs are critical for target validation >> How computational biology teams interface with wet lab research >> What makes Merck Germany's data strategy unique in biotech >> How generative AI is changing how pharma interprets complex datasets Meet Our Guest Jesper Ryge is Director of Computational Biology at Merck Germany. A biophysicist by training, he brings deep expertise in neuroscience, single-cell analysis, and bioinformatics to pharmaceutical R&D. About The Host Ross Katz is Principal and Data Science Lead at CorrDyn. Ross specializes in building intelligent data systems that empower biotech and healthcare organizations to extract insights and drive innovation. Connect with Our Guest: Sponsor: CorrDyn, a data consultancyFind out more about MerckConnect with Jesper Ryge on LinkedIn  Connect with Us: Follow the podcast for more insightful discussions on the latest in biotech and data science.Subscribe and leave a review if you enjoyed this episode!Connect with Ross Katz on LinkedIn Sponsored by… This episode is brought to you by CorrDyn, the leader in data-driven solutions for biotech and healthcare. Discover how CorrDyn is helping organizations turn data into breakthroughs at CorrDyn.

www.iotusecase.com#PredictiveMaintenance #ConditionMonitoring #Prozessindustrie In Episode 184 des IoT Use Case Podcasts spricht Gastgeberin Ing. Madeleine Mickeleit mit Pirmin Lickert, Portfolio Manager für Sales, Marketing, Innovation und Digitalisierung bei Endress+Hauser. Im Fokus: Die Netilion Cloud als zentrales Ökosystem für Condition Monitoring, Gerätediagnose und Remote Services – getestet im Rahmen eines Digitalisierungsprojekts bei Merck. Gemeinsam diskutieren sie, wie sich aus reinen Messwerten konkrete Wartungsempfehlungen ableiten lassen, welche Rolle Ethernet-APL als neuer Standard spielt und warum offene Schnittstellen zur IT-Integration entscheidend sind.Folge 184 auf einen Blick (und Klick):(09:32) Herausforderungen, Potenziale und Status quo – So sieht der Use Case in der Praxis aus(16:34) Lösungen, Angebote und Services – Ein Blick auf die eingesetzten Technologien(23:32) Übertragbarkeit, Skalierung und nächste Schritte – So könnt ihr diesen Use Case nutzenPodcast ZusammenfassungWie lassen sich aus Messwerten konkrete Wartungsempfehlungen ableiten? In dieser Episode sprechen Madeleine Mickeleit und Pirmin Lickert von Endress+Hauser über ein Digitalisierungsprojekt bei Merck – und wie die Netilion Cloud den Schritt von reiner Datenerfassung hin zu smartem Gerätemanagement ermöglicht.Die Herausforderung: Bestandsanlagen mit 4–20 mA-Signalen liefern nur einfache Werte ohne Diagnose. Fehler werden erst bemerkt, wenn Geräte ausfallen. Gleichzeitig entstehen Hürden an der Schnittstelle zwischen OT und IT, wenn Daten sicher in die Cloud übertragen werden sollen.Die Lösung: Über Gateways und Edge Devices werden Messwerte und Diagnosedaten zentral in der Netilion Cloud visualisiert – inklusive Fehlercodes und Handlungsempfehlungen. Ergänzend liefern Apps wie Netilion Health(Gerätediagnose), Netilion Value (Messwerte) und Netilion Library (Dokumentation) zusätzlichen Mehrwert. Die Heartbeat Technology ermöglicht das Nachverfolgen von Drifts und bereitet den Weg für Predictive Maintenance.Besonders spannend: Mit Ethernet-APL entsteht ein neuer Standard, der Geräte direkt ins smarte Netzwerk integriert und eine deutlich höhere Datenqualität und Geschwindigkeit ermöglicht.

The American Academy of Pediatrics released new vaccine recommendations that directly oppose guidance from the HHS – insisting on COVID-19 vaccinations in babies as young as 6 months. Pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole & Dr. Kelly Victory reveal how the AAP has been captured by Big Pharma interests. The organization's top donors, listed on their own website, are Merck, Moderna, Pfizer, and Sanofi: the 4 pharma companies that “make virtually every vaccine on the CDC recommended childhood vaccine schedule.” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. issued a stern warning in response: “AAP should also be candid with doctors and hospitals that recommendations that diverge from the CDC's official list are not shielded from liability under the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act.” Dr. Ryan Cole is a board-certified pathologist trained at Mayo Clinic with subspecialty in dermatopathology from Columbia University. He holds a PhD in virology and immunology and directed a medical laboratory in Idaho for 20 years. He testifies globally on Covid policy and medical freedom. Follow at https://x.com/drcole12 Dr. Kelly Victory is Chief of Emergency & Disaster Medicine at The Wellness Company. A trauma and emergency specialist with over 30 years of experience, she served as Chief Medical Officer for Fortune 500 companies and is an alumna of Harvard's National Preparedness Leadership Initiative. More at https://x.com/DrKellyVictory 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/sponsors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠• FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/fatty15⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://drdrew.com/paleovalley⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • VSHREDMD – Formulated by Dr. Drew: The Science of Cellular Health + World-Class Training Programs, Premium Content, and 1-1 Training with Certified V Shred Coaches! More at https://drdrew.com/vshredmd • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twc.health/drew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://kalebnation.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Susan Pinsky (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/firstladyoflov⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠e⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jordan Sather and Nate Prince return with another hard-hitting episode of MAHA News, diving into the week's biggest health and freedom stories. They kick things off with the Pete and Bobby Challenge, where Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr. put their strength to the test in a push-up and pull-up competition that has everyone talking. From there, the hosts shift into the serious implications of glyphosate spraying in Canada and the broader dangers of genetically engineered crops, highlighting how hidden RNA tinkering in food could impact human genetics and health. The discussion then takes aim at the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is under fire for its push to remove vaccine exemptions and its continued cozy ties with big pharma giants like Pfizer, Merck, and Moderna. RFK Jr.'s sharp rebuke of the AAP sparks debate about liability, childhood vaccine schedules, and health freedom. With side conversations on raw milk legalization, natural detox strategies, and the cultural psyop of green lawns, this episode weaves humor, practicality, and blunt truth into an engaging exploration of health sovereignty.

After many U.S. biopharma companies posted sales declines in the first quarter, the domestic pharma industry largely bounced back to growth in the second quarter. In this episode of "The Top Line," Fierce Pharma's Eric Sagonowsky and Kevin Dunleavy break down the numbers behind the industry’s second-quarter performance. Among U.S. pharma heavyweights, J&J, AbbVie, Pfizer, Regeneron, Bristol Myers Squibb and Biogen each eked out gains this past quarter. Their results varied, with individual stories worth highlighting at each of these major companies. Beyond earnings, Sagonowsky and Dunleavy also discuss the growing competition in diabetes and obesity treatments between Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, as well as Merck’s rising financial reliance on its blockbuster cancer drug Keytruda, among other topics. To learn more about the topics in this episode: Several US pharma giants stage Q2 sales turnaround after subpar results earlier in year The battle of the obesity drug heavyweights 7 top pharmas posted revenue declines in Q1. The common thread? All are US firms Biopharma briefing: Q1 trends, gene therapy updates and ASCO preview See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Merck KGaA's Emre Ozcan outlines the company's systematic approach to integrating digital solutions across the care continuum in specialty pharmaceuticals, moving from technology-first to patient-need-first strategies.

After some years developing websites and interactive and digital marketing projects, Guillem joined Merck in 2009, and he has been always related to digital marketing projects on the business side. Since 2020 Guillem has been driving the Social Selling initiative for Merck Life Science, focusing on Social Scouting with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Social Listening and Employee Advocacy, to help Sales teams be more effective by using social channels to uncover new business opportunities. His work with using Chat CPT to support employee content has been truly inspiring with some great results. Folllow him on Linkedin for more https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillemcardenal/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal and Dr. Arielle Elkrief discuss the clinical relevance of the gut microbiome in cancer immunotherapy and the importance of antibiotic stewardship, as well as interventions currently being explored to treat gut dysbiosis and optimize immunotherapy response. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: Hi everyone, I'm Dr. Monty Pal, welcoming you to the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I'm a medical oncologist. I'm a professor and vice chair of academic affairs at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles.  Today we're here to discuss one of my favorite topics, which is the gut microbiome. It's almost hard to avoid the gut microbiome nowadays if you look at medical literature within oncology. It's an emerging phenomenon, but there are a couple of individuals that I would really define as pioneers in the field. And one of them is actually with me today, Dr. Arielle Elkrief, to discuss the clinical relevance of the gut microbiome, particularly amongst patients receiving immunotherapy, although I imagine our conversation today will take many twists and turns. Arielle is an assistant professor and clinician scientist in the Department of Oncology at the University of Montreal, and she is co-director of the CHUM Microbiome Center there.  FYI for the listeners, we have our full disclosures in the transcript of this episode.  Arielle, thank you so much for joining us today. Dr. Arielle Elkrief: Thanks so much, Monty. This is going to be amazing. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: Well, I have to tell you what sort of inspired me to bring you on as a guest. It was one of many things, but it was this really terrific ASCO Educational [Book] article that you wrote. Now, I have to tell you, I've read all the articles sort of cover to cover in the book, and they're always a wonderful primer, so if our audience is studying for board research or something of that sort, it's a terrific resource to go through. I have to tell you, this piece on the gut microbiome that you wrote is nothing short of a masterpiece. If you read this cover to cover, it's actually going to give you, I think, a sense of the current state and future state of the field. I wanted to start by just sort of beginning with sort of the origin story for a lot of this, which is this association between the gut microbiome and immunotherapy response. This takes us back several years to this pivotal series of papers in Science. Maybe you could walk our audience through that. Dr. Arielle Elkrief: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your kind words about the ASCO [Educational] Book. It was a team effort with a lot of key opinion leaders in the field, so I'm really glad to learn that you've liked it.  Moving backwards in terms of how we came to understand that the gut microbiome is essential to priming a response to cancer immunotherapy actually goes back to 2015 and seminal papers that looked at what happens when we take mice that are germ-free mice that have never been exposed to a microbiome. These are mice that are born by cesarean section and essentially live in a bubble. And when we give those mice tumors and treat them, in the first papers with anti-CTLA-4 treatment, we realized that these antibodies don't work at all. And that was the first observation that the presence of a gut microbiome was essential to mounting an anti-cancer immune response. When we supplemented those same mice with beneficial bacteria or feces from responder patients, we were able to restore the response to immunotherapy. And so those were really the first preclinical observations that made us understand the critical role of the microbiome in immunotherapy response. Moving a little bit in the future, we examined the fecal microbiome composition using shotgun metagenomic sequencing in different cohorts of patients with solid tumors, namely lung cancers, kidney cancers, and also skin tumors like melanoma, and found that patients who responded to immunotherapy had a distinct microbiome that was characterized by beneficial bacteria compared to patients who experienced resistance to immunotherapy that had a dysbiotic or diseased microbiome. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: So, you know, it's interesting, these techniques that we're using to sequence the gut, they're a little bit different. So I wonder if you can give the audience a quick primer on these techniques that you're so well versed in, shotgun metagenomic sequencing, 16S rRNA sequencing. If you had to describe this in 30 seconds, which is a tall task, how would you do that? Dr. Arielle Elkrief: That's a tall task. Much of what we know about the microbiome initially came from a technique called 16S rRNA sequencing. This is a technique that amplifies the 16S region and basically tells you at the genus level what's going on at the level of bacterial composition. This technique is fast, relatively cheap, and can be performed on a laptop computer, which is excellent. The problem is that it's prone to a lot of technical variations. Different primers might give you different results, and you're really limited at the genus resolution. You can't get a good resolution in terms of species, and we're learning that different species from the same genus might have different physiological properties, and the same thing goes at the strain level. So when we really zone in and look at inter-species changes, we're seeing that these actually have specific functions in the host. So that brings us to metagenomic sequencing, which is a whole genome sequencing, next-generation sequencing based method that looks at the whole composition and gives you information not only on bacteria, but you might also get fungal and viral properties. You can zoom in on the strain level. You can also get functional output, so we can examine what the metabolic properties of specific species or strains might look like. The negative aspects of shotgun metagenomic sequencing is that it takes a lot of computational power in order to analyze the results and it might take a little bit longer. And certainly, within the clinical setting, not something that's feasible yet.  And that brings us to more novel point-of-care biomarker tools that we've collaborated in developing along with Dr. Laurence Zitvogel and Dr. Lisa Derosa at Gustave Roussy, that learning from the shotgun metagenomics results designed a probe using quantitative PCR which looks for this specific bacteria we know to be important and developed a ratio of harmful bacteria to beneficial bacteria. This is called the TOPOSCORE, and it actually is able to predict quite nicely the response to immunotherapy using a stool sample and a really good turnaround time of almost 72 hours. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: That was a perfect overview and a lot of information in a short amount of time. It also makes you take out your high school biology textbooks, doesn't it, to understand that the bacterial ribosome, right, is a different size and shape, and that's what we're sequencing here. But these techniques I think are incredibly important, and I'm glad you actually discussed this, this RT-PCR based strategy of calculating the TOPOSCORE. It lends itself to this phenomenon of dysbiosis, and I think for our audience, that's going to be an important term to understand as time goes on. There's the normal healthy gut and then there's this phenomenon of dysbiosis, which is, I guess, simply put, an unhealthy gut. But tell us about, you know, how often you see dysbiosis in a cancer patient, maybe versus a normal healthy adult. Dr. Arielle Elkrief: So, I think we can split up your question into two parts. One is we know from cohort studies and population level-based studies that the microbiome of patients with cancer is distinct from healthy patients or healthy people. And we know that because of the global composition. We also think that there are diversity metrics that lend themselves to being described as dysbiotic. But we do know that the microbiome of people with cancer is distinct from healthy volunteers. That's the first point.  In terms of how frequently dysbiosis occurs in patients with cancer, it's not very well defined. We know that even among healthy people, there is a certain level of dysbiosis. Laurence in her talk mentioned that to be about 10% to 20%. And the other fascinating component is that when we're thinking about dysbiosis and the cancer associated microbiome, in terms of the species that are enriched, it's quite striking that a lot of these dysbiotic or negative bacteria are also found to be enriched in patients with metabolic disease, like cardiovascular disease, for example. And so it's unclear if dysbiosis is the cause or consequence, but there definitely seems to be a general pattern of disease when looking at the microbiome compared to healthy people. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: That's interesting. So, I'll tell you, my second favorite portion of your article, and I'll tell you my favorite portion as well in the context of this podcast, but my second favorite part was the section around antibiotic stewardship. You know, the utilization of antibiotics in a very pragmatic fashion amongst our patients. Can you describe why that's so critical in the context of the microbiome? Dr. Arielle Elkrief: Antibiotics can disrupt the gut microbiome composition. We know this from mouse studies, but also cohort studies of patients that are exposed to antibiotics. And most importantly, we know that patients who are exposed to antibiotics, either before or during the immunotherapy period, have significantly worse progression-free survival and overall survival to immunotherapy. And this is true for immunotherapy in the monotherapy setting, but also when combined with chemotherapy. What's striking is that when we look at patients who are just treated with chemotherapy, we don't see the negative outcome of antibiotics on outcome and progression-free survival and overall survival, suggesting that the negative impact of antibiotics on outcomes is really specific to immunotherapy backbones. The other important point is that this negative signal is maintained even after adjusting for standard prognostic variables in the specific malignancies that we're looking at. And then most importantly, at the mechanistic level, we were able to actually pinpoint the mechanism behind this antibiotic related dysbiosis. And we see this with a bloom of negative bacteria which induces a loss of MAd-CAM, which is an endothelial gut checkpoint immune marker, and that causes an efflux of immunosuppressive T cells, which are usually in the gut, to go straight into the tumor where they make the tumor unamenable to an immunotherapy response. And so now we finally have the mechanism as to why antibiotics are harmful and why we need to practice antibiotic stewardship. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: And just to be clear for the audience, I mean, if a patient needs antibiotics, they need antibiotics. But perhaps it just suggests that, and we have, I suppose, this predilection as oncologists, just for the minor cold or cough or what have you, we maybe should be a little bit more cognizant of whether or not antibiotics are truly necessary. Is that fair? Dr. Arielle Elkrief: Absolutely. So what we're advocating for is antibiotic stewardship, and this is the clear recommendation that we can make. So that means confirming a bacterial infection. If it's there and antibiotics are indicated, to choose the most narrow spectrum for the shortest course and constantly re-evaluate the indication of antibiotics. And of course, we need to work with our colleagues in infectious diseases who've done incredible work in antibiotic stewardship. And all along this process we also need to be mindful of other medications and polypharmacy, such as proton pump inhibitors or narcotics, for example, we think that these other medications which are frequently prescribed in our cancer population can also potentially have negative impacts on the microbiome and immunotherapy response. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: I think that's a terrific summary and big guidance for the audience.  I promised you I'd tell you my favorite part of your article, and this is this huge table. I think the table is two and a half pages long, if I remember correctly, but it's an awesome table, and I highly recommend our audience to check this out. It lists literally every therapeutic trial for the microbiome under the sun. And so it begins with the approach of fecal microbiota transplant, which I'm going to ask you to tell us about in a second, but it also hinges on a lot of really cool sort of novel therapies, live bacterial products, mixes of different microbial products. Maybe take us through this whole approach of FMT (fecal microbiota transplantation). I actually wasn't aware of the dozens of trials that you listed there in this space. It seems like it's a very active area of research. Dr. Arielle Elkrief: Definitely. So, as you alluded to, FMT or fecal microbiota transplantation is the most well studied and direct way to modify the patient's microbiome. This technique aims to replace the patient's dysbiotic microbiome with that of a healthy microbiome, either from a healthy donor volunteer that's been heavily screened, or from a patient who experienced response to immunotherapy. And, as three landmark studies so far that have been published demonstrated the potential of FMT to reduce primary resistance or secondary resistance to immunotherapy, and this has been in melanoma.  We also recently reported on the results of our FMT-LUMINate trial, which looked at patients with lung cancer and melanoma. Once again, FMT, when combined with immunotherapy was safe and led to a higher proportion of responses than we would normally expect.  We're now also looking at randomized trials that have come out. So the first being the TACITO trial in kidney cancer, which compared FMT plus pembrolizumab and axitinib to placebo in patients with RCC, and again, FMT was safe and feasible and also led to an increased progression-free survival at one year, meeting the study's primary endpoint.  And so, so far, there's a wealth of data really showing the promise of FMT when combined with immunotherapy, and we're now in the process of conducting larger randomized trials, including in melanoma with the CCTG (Canada Cancer Trials Group) in our ME17 or Canbiome2 trial, where we're going to be enrolling 128 patients with metastatic melanoma to receive FMT and standard of care immunotherapy compared to standard of care immunotherapy alone. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: You're very humble, so I've got to highlight for our audience. This was a mega grant that Arielle received to fund really the largest prospective exploration of FMT that will exist to date. So I'm really excited about that. I wish this was something we could participate in stateside.  Before we jump into the other approach, which is live bacterial products and mixes thereof, where do you see FMT going? I think that one of the perceived challenges with FMT is that it's hard to implement, right? You need to have a really robust framework when it comes to gastroenterology, the preparation's challenging. Is there a way to envision FMT use being more generalized? Dr. Arielle Elkrief: Those are great questions. So we're lucky in Canada to work with pioneers in FMT, Michael Silverman, Saman Maleki, and John Lenehan in London, Ontario, who had this really robust FMT healthy donor screening program, which literally screens for every pathogen under the sun, and we haven't had any problems with feasibility or implementing FMT in Canada. But I think that once we're going to hopefully start doing larger scale, randomized phase three studies, that we might run into problems with scalability. And I think also with regards to reproducibility, and that's the feedback that we're getting from some regulatory authorities, especially at the level of the FDA, where there are some concerns around inter- and intra-donor variability because, of course, we can't guarantee that every fecal sample is going to be the same. So that has really pushed the field to think about other strategies, such as live biotherapeutic products which take modified FMT or bacteria from stools from either healthy donors or from responder patients and basically turn them into drugs that are regulated as drugs and can then be studied in the context of investigational new drugs or products. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: I like this and, you know, I do think that there's a future for it. We just have to kind of put our heads together and figure out how to get over all of these logistical hurdles, but, you know, I agree, I think your group and others have demonstrated, especially with this trial that you're fanning out all throughout Canada, that it can potentially be done.  This is a topic that could probably go on for another couple of hours, right, especially based on the size of the table that you put together in this brilliant article, but tell us about live bacterial products or LBPs, as we call them these days. What's the current status, what's the future there? And maybe I'll give you less than two minutes here, although again, I realize it's a two-hour topic. Dr. Arielle Elkrief: You're probably better suited to speak about that because you've been one of the pioneers in terms of this. So we can think about LBPs in terms of single strain organisms, like CBM588 for an example, which your group did some amazing work in showing that, in a randomized setting, that this led to better responses than we would expect compared to just work with controls. We also know that LBPs can have multiple strains, up to 30. We're collaborating with a company called Cannabis Bioscience that is actually working on much larger communities of consortia. And so we're really excited about the direction that that's taking in terms of taking these LBPs and developing them from the drug perspective. In addition to LBPs, we know that there are other ways that we can change the microbiome, notably prebiotics, which are compounds which can have a beneficial impact on the microbiome. And one of these is camu camu, which I know your group is leading a clinical trial looking at camu camu and kidney cancer, and we're excited to see how that compares to FMT or LBPs, because that might be a potentially scalable alternative. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: That's awesome. What a terrific overview, and that was less than two minutes. I don't know how you did it. That's terrific.  Arielle, this has been such an insightful conversation. I just want to thank you for, again, a terrific article in the ASCO Educational Book. I highly recommend all of our listeners to go there and check it out, and also for sharing all these terrific insights on the podcast today. Dr. Arielle Elkrief: Thank you so much, Monty. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: And thanks to our listeners, too. If you value the insights that you heard today on the ASCO Daily News Podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, everyone. Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Find out more about today's speakers:    Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal  @montypal Dr. Arielle Elkrief Follow ASCO on social media:     @ASCO on Twitter    ASCO on Bluesky   ASCO on Facebook     ASCO on LinkedIn     Disclosures:    Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal:   Speakers' Bureau: MJH Life Sciences, IntrisiQ, Peerview  Research Funding (Inst.): Exelixis, Merck, Osel, Genentech, Crispr Therapeutics, Adicet Bio, ArsenalBio, Xencor, Miyarsian Pharmaceutical  Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Crispr Therapeutics, Ipsen, Exelixis  Dr. Arielle Elkrief: Honoraria: AstraZenica, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, EMD Serono Consulting or Advisory Role: Bristol-Myers Squibb Research Funding (Inst.): Kanvas Bioscience, AstraZeneca, Merck Other Relationship: Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians of Canada, Cedar's Cancer Center (Henry R. Shibata Fellowship), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

There aren't many Ivy League professors as bold as Dave Collum. It's amazing he still has a job.  (00:00) How Collum Predicted the 2008 Financial Crisis (11:00) Collum's Mission to Uncover the Truth About Covid (19:36) Government Experiments Being Conducted on Foster Care Children (24:17) What's the Truth About Diddy? (34:07) What's the Truth About the Assassination Attempt on Donald Trump? (1:00:45) Are We Being Purposefully Distracted From Things That Actually Matter? (1:12:04) The Real Dangers of AI Dave Collum is a professor of organic chemistry at Cornell University, where he earned his BS in biology and later returned after completing his PhD in chemistry at Columbia. A former department chair and 20-year associate editor of The Journal of Organic Chemistry, Dave has also consulted for major pharmaceutical companies including Merck, Pfizer, and Amgen. Outside of academia, he's known for his sharp, contrarian takes on politics, economics, and culture—often shared via his unfiltered X account (@DavidBCollum), frequent podcast appearances, and his widely read annual “Year in Review” at Peak Prosperity. He's also coached collegiate gymnastics and taekwondo and has been featured in outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and The Federalist but usually on topics far removed from chemistry. Paid partnerships with: Dutch: Get $50 a year for vet care with Tucker50 at https://dutch.com/tucker Liberty Safe: Visit https://LibertySafe.com to find a dealer and learn more Beam: Get 30% off for a limited time using the code TUCKER at https://ShopBeam.com/Tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

‍ New: Valora - Your AI Business Coach Turn the wisdom from this episode into practical actions for your business in minutes. Click here now to access the tool > ‍ How to Lead with Quiet Confidence and Create Partnerships that Thrive Does it sometimes feel as though the workplace, or business world, was designed for the loudest voices, not for you? In this episode of The Brilliant Business Book Festival, I'm joined by Jennifer Kahnweiler, author of The Introverted Leader (3rd Edition): Building on Your Quiet Strength, and several other books that change the business game. Her work shines a light on what so many of us have felt: introverts aren't less capable, they simply lead differently. And when they're allowed to do so, the results can be extraordinary. What follows isn't just a recap of our conversation. It's a deeper dive into why introversion is a leadership advantage, how introverts and extroverts can form “genius opposites” partnerships, and how practical tools like delegation and preparation can transform how we show up at work. You'll learn how understanding your natural wiring can help you prepare, communicate, and collaborate more powerfully, without pretending to be someone you're not. If you've ever felt overlooked in meetings, frustrated by fast-paced demands, or unsure how to delegate without losing your standards, this conversation will give you tools, strategies, and confidence to lead on your own terms. ‍ ‍ Prefer to WATCH instead of read? Visit: https://www.youtube.com/@melittacampbell/podcasts ‍ ‍ “Quiet leaders aren't less capable — they're often more prepared, more observant and more trusted.” - Jennifer Kahnweiler ‍ Why Introversion is a Leadership Strength For too long, introversion has been cast as something to overcome. “Speak up more.” “Be more confident.” “Network like extroverts.” ‍ But Jennifer reminds us: introversion isn't a flaw. It's a foundation. Introverted leaders thrive because they bring qualities that today's organisations desperately need: ‍ Preparation: the ability to walk into a room having thought through angles, questions, and next steps. Deep listening: a skill that makes colleagues and clients feel truly heard. Meaningful connection: not surface-level networking, but genuine one-to-one or small group relationships that last. Think of it like gardening. Extroverts may scatter seeds widely, covering ground quickly. Introverts plant fewer seeds, but tend and water them with patience … leading to stronger, longer-lasting growth. ‍ When introverts stop trying to keep up with the loudest voices and instead honour their natural wiring, leadership begins to feel more natural, more energising, and more effective. ‍ Making the Most of “Genius Opposites” One of Jennifer's most fascinating frameworks is what she calls “genius opposites”: introverted–extrovert partnerships that, when nurtured properly, create exponential results. Through her research, she developed the ABCDE model for making these partnerships thrive: A – Accept the Alien: stop trying to change your partner; embrace their difference. B – Bring on the Battles: don't avoid conflict, air it out early before resentment builds. C – Cast the Character: put people in roles where their strengths shine (the extrovert waving people down at a trade show; the introvert taking them deeper once they're at the booth). D – Destroy the Dislike: you don't have to be best friends, but you do need mutual respect, and a little humour goes a long way. E – Each Can't Offer Everything: clients and colleagues benefit when both voices are present; difference leads to richer solutions. The metaphor here is a pair of rowers in a boat. If both row on the same side, you go in circles. But when you learn to pull in sync from opposite sides, you glide forward faster and straighter than you ever could alone. ‍ “The right introvert–extrovert partnership doesn't add up, it multiplies.” - Jennifer Kahnweiler ‍ Speaking Up — Without Being Loud One of the biggest frustrations introverts share is being overlooked in meetings. You pause to reflect before speaking, and suddenly someone else has jumped in. Silence gets misread as disinterest. But Jennifer offers strategies that allow introverts to be heard without forcing themselves to “perform”: Prepare key points ahead of time so you can contribute with clarity. Ask for reflection time (“I'd like to think about this and come back with a response tomorrow”). Follow up in writing with a synthesis of ideas, often more valuable than what's said in the room. Brené Brown has even built reflection breaks into her team's meetings, so introverts (including herself) have space to process ideas before decisions are made. A simple but profound reminder that influence doesn't always happen in the room; it happens in the follow-up too. ‍ Delegation Without the Guilt Many introverts struggle with delegation — worried that tasks won't be done to their standard, or that they'll burden others. But holding on to everything creates bottlenecks, exhaustion and stalled growth. Jennifer reframes delegation as a gift, not a burden. By handing over tasks: You free space for your strategic thinking, the work only you can do. You give others the opportunity to learn and grow. You prevent burnout, ensuring you show up as your best self. Think of delegation like passing a torch in a relay race. You're not abandoning the run; you're ensuring the team as a whole keeps moving forward faster. ‍ The Quiet Confidence Advantage If you take only one thing from Jennifer's research and our conversation, let it be this: Introversion is not just “enough” — it's an advantage. By honouring your natural strengths, partnering wisely with complementary styles, and creating environments where quieter voices are respected, you don't just survive in leadership — you thrive. And perhaps the bigger invitation is this: what if we stopped assuming leadership must look a certain way, and instead embraced the full spectrum of how people naturally show up? The result wouldn't just be fairer, it would be far more effective. ‍ Final Thought to Reflect On? What could shift for you if you stopped trying to “keep up” with the loudest voices, and instead led in the way only you can? ‍ Want to explore what this could look like for you? ‍Learn more about the ways you can work with Melitta Campbell to uncover your Value Sweet Spot to market, sell and grow your business confidently, and always on your terms. Working with Melitta >  ‍ ‍ About Jennifer Jennifer B. Kahnweiler, PhD, is a bestselling author and one of the top global leadership speakers on introverts in the workplace. Her pioneering books, The Introverted Leader, Quiet Influence, The Genius of Opposites, and Creating Introvert-Friendly Workplaces have been translated into 18 languages. The Introverted Leader was named one of the top 5 business books by The Shanghai Daily. Jennifer has partnered with leading organizations like Amazon, Merck, Kimberly Clark, NASA, Bosch, and the US Centers for Disease Control. She has over 12 years experience delivering online presentations and courses. She has delivered keynotes from Singapore to Spain. Her engaging presentations to diverse audiences blend research with provocative examples and practical tools. Jennifer has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The New York Times and has appeared as a guest on over 100 podcasts. Jennifer holds the Certified Speaking Professional designation, awarded to a small percentage of speakers, and is proud to serve as a mentor to many professional women. She received her PhD in counseling and organizational development from Florida State University and her degrees in sociology and counseling from Washington University, St. Louis. A native New Yorker, Jennifer calls Atlanta, GA home. ‍ Read Jennifer's Book: The Introverted Leader (3rd Edition): Building on Your Quiet Strength ‍ Connect with Jennifer Website    LinkedIn ‍ ‍ About Your Host, Melitta Campbell Melitta Campbell is an award-winning business coach, TEDx speaker, author of A Shy Girl's Guide to Networking and founder of the Dream Clients Club. ‍ Through her Value WhisperingTM Blueprint, she helps introverted female entrepreneurs build quietly impactful businesses that grow through clarity, trust, and alignment. ‍ Learn more about working with Melitta here ‍ Loved this episode? Turn your Insight into Action with Valora Valora is the podcast's new AI Business Coach. Answer three short questions and she'll translate your responses into simple, practical actions you can take this week to grow your business. Click here now to access Valora > ‍ ‍ You May Also Enjoy... Get a PhD in You: A Course in Miraculous Self-Discovery The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea The Common Path To Uncommon Success More Heart, Less Hustle The Truth About Entrepreneurial Poverty (and how to avoid it) ‍ > More Podcast Episodes ‍

The drug maker Merck recently announced its plans to start two new trials, known as the EXPrESSIVE program, testing a monthly pill for PrEP. A once-a-month PrEP pill holds great potential for the field. Even with daily pills, a monthly ring, or long acting injectables such as cabotegravir and recently FDA-approved lenacapavir, there'll be people who can't find what they really need for prevention.    For advocates who follow prevention, there's a lot to know about these trials, and powerful lessons to learn about Good Participatory Practice (GPP) and impactful involvement of stakeholders—especially community—in research. GPP has been a cornerstone of the process of design and protocol development for the EXPrESSIVE trials, and it doesn't stop there.   This episode features Merck Senior Principal Scientist Rebeca Plank and AVAC's Regional Manager for Research Engagement Grace Kumwenda. They explain why a monthly pill could be so important to HIV prevention and how GPP is shaping the design and rollout of the trials. 

Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma and Biotech world. ## Bayer has secured a $1.3 billion deal with Kumquat Biosciences for exclusive access to their small-molecule KRAS G12D blocker. Meanwhile, Arrowhead has navigated through the Sarepta storm and experienced a drop in stock prices, despite having no direct ties to Sarepta's issues. In other news, a medical journal stands firm in refusing to retract a vaccine study, HHS has put a freeze on Vaxart's oral COVID-19 vaccine, and GenScript is celebrating a new era of innovation.## Additionally, discussions surround obesity leaders defending their injectable GLP-1 empires, recent layoffs at Merck, and the hurdles faced by oral obesity drugs. Opinion pieces delve into the skepticism towards mRNA technology and the potential repercussions of dismissing the head maha implementor following an mRNA purge. Stay tuned for more updates on upcoming events and job opportunities in the industry.

Dominate C. diff! Learn to distinguish colonization from infection, select first-line therapies, and counsel patients on recurrence prevention and microbiome recovery. We're joined by IDSA past president and expert on foodborne and intestinal infections, Dr. Cindy Sears (Johns Hopkins University) for a comprehensive update on Clostridioides difficile (C. diff, Cdiff, CDAD, CDI). Claim CME for this episode at curbsiders.vcuhealth.org! Patreon | Episodes | Subscribe | Spotify | YouTube | Newsletter | Contact | Swag! | CME Show Segments 00:00 Intro 03:00 Guest bio and hobby 04:25 Case of Charles Fleur Fontaine 06:00 Risk factors and epidemiology 08:00 Antibiotic hierarchy of risk 10:00 Diagnosis, testing strategies 14:00 Defining severity 17:30 Treatment options 20:00 Microbiome recovery strategies 24:00 Probiotics and postbiotics 27:00 Infection control counseling 30:00 C. diff and colon cancer 32:00 Recurrent C. diff strategies 35:00 Why some FMT and bezlotoxumab were discontinued 38:00 Microbiota replacement therapies 43:00 Prophylaxis strategies 45:00 Future therapies and ongoing research 47:00 Audience Q&A 52:00 Outro Credits Written and Produced by: Matthew Watto, MD, FACP  Cover Art and Infographic by: Hosts: Matthew Watto MD, FACP; Paul Williams MD, FACP    Reviewer: Sai S Achi MD,MBA,FACP Showrunners: Matthew Watto MD, FACP; Paul Williams MD, FACP Technical Production: PodPaste Guest: Cynthia Sears MD Disclosures Dr. Sears reports no relevant financial disclosures. Dr. Williams financial relationships disclosed include a Merck grant or research support. This relationship has not ended. Sponsor: Mint Mobile  This year, skip breaking a sweat AND breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your 3-month Unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/CURB  Sponsor: Panacea Financial Let Panacea Financial take the financial stress off your plate,so you can get back to doing what matters most. Visit panaceafinancial.com  Sponsor: FIGS Get15% off your first order at wearfigs.com with the code FIGSRX

Dr. Hope Rugo and Dr. Kamaria Lee discuss the prevalence of financial toxicity in cancer care in the United States and globally, focusing on breast cancer, and highlight key interventions to mitigate financial hardship. TRANSCRIPT  Dr. Hope Rugo: Hello, and welcome to By the Book, a podcast series from ASCO that features engaging conversations between editors and authors of the ASCO Educational Book. I'm your host, Dr. Hope Rugo. I'm the director of the Women's Cancer Program and division chief of breast medical oncology at the City of Hope Cancer Center, and I'm also the editor-in-chief of the Educational Book. Rising healthcare costs are causing financial distress for patients and their families across the globe. Patients with cancer report financial toxicity as a major impediment to their quality of life, and its association with worse outcomes is well documented. Today, we'll be discussing how patients with breast cancer are uniquely at risk for financial toxicity. Joining me for this discussion is Dr. Kamaria Lee, a fourth-year radiation oncology resident and health equity researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center and a co-author of the recently published article titled, "Financial Toxicity in Breast Cancer: Why Does It Matter, Who Is at Risk, and How Do We Intervene?" Our full disclosures are available in the transcript of this episode.  Dr. Lee, it's great to have you on this podcast. Dr. Kamaria Lee: Hey, Dr. Rugo. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here today. I also would like to recognize my co-authors, Dr. Alexandru Eniu, Dr. Christopher Booth, Molly MacDonald, and Dr. Fumiko Chino, who worked on this book chapter with me and did a fantastic presentation on the topic at ASCO this past year. Dr. Hope Rugo: Thanks very much. We'll now just jump into the questions. We know that rising medical costs contribute to a growing financial burden on patients, which has [GC1]  [JG2]  been documented to contribute to lower quality-of-life, compromised clinical care, and worse health outcomes. How are patients with breast cancer uniquely at risk for financial toxicity? How does the problem vary within the breast cancer population in terms of age, racial and ethnic groups, and those who have metastatic disease? Dr. Kamaria Lee: Breast cancer patients are uniquely at risk of financial toxicity for several reasons. Three key reasons are that breast cancer often requires multimodal treatment. So this means patients are receiving surgery, many receive systemic therapies, including hormonal therapies, as well as radiation. And so this requires care coordination and multiple visits that can increase costs. Secondly, another key reason that patients with breast cancer are uniquely at risk for financial toxicity is that there's often a long survivorship period that includes long-term care for toxicities and continued follow-ups, and patients might also be involved in activities regarding advocacy, but also physical therapy and mental health appointments during their prolonged survivorship, which can also add costs. And a third key reason that patients with breast cancer are uniquely at risk for financial toxicity is that the patient population is primarily women. And we know that women are more likely to have increased caregiver responsibilities while also potentially working and managing their treatments, and so this is another contributor. Within the breast cancer population, those who are younger and those who are from marginalized racial/ethnic groups and those with metastatic disease have been shown to be at an increased risk. Those who are younger may be more likely to need childcare during treatment if they have kids, or they're more likely to be employed and not yet retired, which can be disrupted while receiving treatment. And those who are racial/ethnic minorities may have increased financial toxicity due to reasons that exist even after controlling for socioeconomic factors. And some of these reasons have been shown to be increased risk of job or income loss or transportation barriers during treatment. And lastly, for those with metastatic breast cancer, there can be ongoing financial distress due to the long-term care that is needed for treatment, and this can include parking, transportation, and medications while managing their metastatic disease. Dr. Hope Rugo: I think it is really important to understand these issues as you just outlined. There has been a lot of focus on financial toxicity research in recent years, and that has led to novel approaches in screening for financial hardship. Can you tell us about the new screening tools and interventions and how you can easily apply that to clinical practice, keeping in mind that people aren't at MD Anderson with a bunch of support and information on this but are in clinical practice and seeing many, many patients a day with lots of different cancers? Dr. Kamaria Lee: You're exactly right that there is incredible nuance needed in understanding how to best screen for financial hardship in different types of practices. There are multiple financial toxicity tools. The most commonly used tool is the Comprehensive Score for Financial Toxicity, also known as the COST tool. In its full form, it's an 11-item survey. There's also a summary question as well. And these questions look at objective and subjective financial burden, and it uses a five-point Likert scale. For example, one question on the full form is, "I know that I have enough money in savings, retirement, or assets to cover the cost of my treatment," and then patients are able to respond "not at all" to "very much" with a threshold score for financial toxicity risk. Of course, as you noted, one critique of having an 11-item survey is that there's limited time in patient encounters with their providers. And so recently, Thom et al validated an abbreviated two-question version of the COST tool. This validation was done in an urban comprehensive cancer center, and it was found to have a high predictive value to the full measure. We note which two questions are specifically pulled from the full measure within the book chapter. And this is one way that it can be easier for clinicians who are in a busier setting to still screen for financial toxicity with fewer questions. I also do recommend that clinicians who know their clinic's workflow the best, work with their team of nurses, financial navigators, and others to best integrate the tool into their workflow. For some, this may mean sending the two-item survey as a portal message so that patients can answer it before consults. Other times, it could mean having it on the tablet that can be done in the clinic waiting room. And so there are different ways that screening can be done, even in a busy setting, and acknowledging that different practices have different amounts of resources and time. Dr. Hope Rugo: And where would people access that easily? I recognize that that information is in your chapter, or your article that's on PubMed that will be linked to this podcast, but it is nice to just know where people could easily access that online. Dr. Kamaria Lee: Yes, and so you should be able to Google ‘the COST measure', and then there is a website that also has the forms as well. So it's also beyond the book chapter, Googling ‘the COST measure', and then online they would be able to find access to the form. Dr. Hope Rugo: And how often would you do that screening? Dr. Kamaria Lee: So, I think it's definitely important that we are as proactive as possible. And so initially, I recommend that the screening happens at the time of diagnosis, and so if it's done through the portal, it can be sent before the initial consult, or again, however, is best in the workflow. So at the time of diagnosis and then at regular intervals, so throughout the treatment process, but then also into the follow-up period as well to best understand if there's still a financial burden even after the treatments have been completed. Dr. Hope Rugo: I wonder if in the metastatic setting, you could do it at the change of treatment, you know, a month after somebody's changed treatment, because people may not be as aware of the financial constraints when they first get prescribed a drug. It's more when you hear back from how much it's going to cost. And leading into that, I think it's, what do you do with this? So, you know, this cost conversation is really important. You're going to be talking to the patient about the cost considerations when you, for example, see that there are financial issues, you're prescribing treatments. How do we implement impactful structured cost conversations with our breast cancer patients, help identify financial issues, and intervene? How do we intervene? I mean, as physicians often we aren't really all that aware, or providers, of how to address the cost. Dr. Kamaria Lee: Yes, I agree fully that another key time when to screen for financial toxicity is at that transition between treatments to best understand where they're at based off of what they've received previously for care, and then to anticipate needs when changing regimens, such as like you said in the metastatic setting. As we're collecting this information, you're right, we screen, we get this information, and what do we do? I do agree that there is a lack of knowledge among us clinicians of how do we manage this information. What is insurance? How do we manage insurance and help patients with insurance concerns? How do we help them navigate out-of-pocket costs or even the indirect costs of transportation? Those are a lot of things that are not covered in-depth in traditional medical training. And so it can be overwhelming for a lot of clinicians, not only due to time limitations in clinic, but also just having those conversations within their visit. And so what I would say, a key thing to note, is that this is another area for multidisciplinary care. So just as we're treating patients in a multidisciplinary way within oncology as we work with our medical oncology, surgical colleagues across the board, it's knowing that this is another area for multidisciplinary care. So the team members include all of the different oncologists, but it also includes team members such as financial counselors and navigators and social workers and even understanding nonprofit partners who we have who have money that can be set aside to help reduce costs for certain different aspects of treatment. Another thing I will note is that most patients with breast cancer often say they do want to have these conversations still with their clinicians. So they do still see a clinician as someone that can weigh in on the costs of their treatment or can weigh in on this other aspect of their care, even if it's not the actual medication or the radiation. And so patients do desire to hear from their clinicians about this topic, and so I think another way to make it feel less overwhelming for clinicians like ourselves is to know that even small conversations are helpful and then being knowledgeable about within your institution or, like I said, outside of it with nonprofits, being aware of who can I refer this patient to for continued follow-up and for more detailed information and resources. Dr. Hope Rugo: Are those the successful interventions? It's really referring to financial navigators? How do people identify? You know, in an academic center, we often will sort of punt this to social workers or our nurse navigators. What about in the community? What's a successful intervention example of mitigating financial toxicity? Dr. Kamaria Lee: I agree completely that the context at which people are practicing is important to note. So as you alluded to, in some bigger systems, we do have financial navigators and this has been seen to be successful in providing applications and assisting with applications for things such as pharmaceutical assistance, insurance applications, discount opportunities.  Another successful intervention are financial toxicity tumor boards, which I acknowledge might not be able to exist everywhere. But where this is possible, multidisciplinary tumor boards that include both doctors and nurses and social workers and any other members of the care team have been able to effectively decrease patients' personal spending on care costs and decrease co-pays through having a dedicated time to discuss concerns as they arise or even proactively. Otherwise, I think in the community, there are other interventions in regards to understanding different aspects of government programs that might be available for patients that are not, you know, limited to an institution, but that are more nationally available, and then again, also having the nonprofit, you know, partnerships to see other resources that patients can have access to.  And then I would also say that the indirect costs are a significant burden for many patients. So by that, I mean even parking costs, transportation, childcare. And so even though those aren't interventions necessarily with someone who is a financial navigator, I would recommend that even if it's a community practice, they discuss ways that they can help offset those indirect costs with patients with parking or if there are ways to help offset transportation costs or at least educate patients on other centers that may be closer to them or they can still receive wonderful care, and then also making sure that patients are able to even have appointments scheduled in ways that are easier for them financially.  So even if someone's receiving care out in the community where there's not a financial navigator, as clinicians or our scheduling teams, sometimes there are options to make sure if a patient wants, visits are more so on one day than throughout the week or many hours apart that can really cause loss of income due to missed work. And so there are also kind of more nuanced interventions that can happen even without a financial navigation system in place. Dr. Hope Rugo: I think that those are really good points and it is interesting when you think about financial toxicity. I mean, we worry a lot when patients can't take the drugs because they can't afford them, but there are obviously many other non-treatment, direct treatment-related issues that come up like the parking, childcare, tolls, you know, having a working car, all those kinds of things, and the unexpected things like school is out or something like that that really play a big role where they don't have alternatives. And I think that if we think about just drug costs, I think those are a big issue in the global setting. And your article did address financial toxicity in the global setting. International financial toxicity rates range from 25% of patients with breast cancer in high-income countries to nearly 80% in low- and middle-income countries or LMICs. You had cited a recent meta-analysis of the global burnout from cancer, and that article found that over half of patients faced catastrophic health expenditures. And of course, I travel internationally and have a lot of colleagues who are working in oncology in many countries, and it is really often kind of shocking from our perspective to see what people can get coverage for and how much they have to pay out-of-pocket and how much that changes, that causes a lot of disparity in access to healthcare options, even those that improve survival. Can you comment on the global impact of this problem? Dr. Kamaria Lee: I am glad that you brought this up for discussion as well. Financial toxicity is something that is a significant global issue. As you mentioned, as high as 80% of patients with breast cancer in low- and middle-income countries have had significant financial toxicity. And it's particularly notable that even when looking at breast cancer compared to other malignancies around the world, the burden appears to be worse. This has been seen even in countries with free universal healthcare. One example is Sri Lanka, where they saw high financial toxicity for their patients with breast cancer, even with this free universal healthcare. But there were also those travel costs and just additional out-of-hospital tests that were not covered. Also, literature in low- and middle-income countries shows that patients might also be borrowing money from their social networks, so from their family and their friends, to help cover their treatment costs, and in some cases, people are making daily food compromises to help offset the cost of their care. So there is a really large burden of financial toxicity generally for cancer globally, but also specifically in breast cancer, it warrants specific discussion. In the meta-analysis that you mentioned, they identified key risk factors of financial toxicity globally that included people who had a larger family size, a lower income, a lack of insurance, longer disease duration, so again, the accumulation of visits and costs and co-pay over time, and those who had multiple treatments. And so in the global setting, there is this significant burden, but then I will also note that there is a lack of literature in low-income countries on financial toxicity. So where we suspect that there is a higher burden and where we need to better understand how it's distributed and what interventions can be applied, especially culturally specific interventions for each country and community, there's less research on this topic. So there is definitely an increased need for research in financial toxicity, particularly in the global setting. Dr. Hope Rugo: Yes, and I think that goes on to how we hope that financial toxicity researchers will have approaches to large-scale multi-institutional interventions to improve financial toxicity. I think this is an enormous challenge, but one of the SWOG organizations has done some great work in this area, and a randomized trial addressing cancer-related financial hardship through the delivery of a proactive financial navigation intervention is one area that SWOG has focused on, which I think is really interesting. Of course, that's going to be US-based, which is how we might find our best paths starting. Do you think that's a good path forward, maybe that being able to provide something like that across institutions that are independent of being a cancer only academic center, or more general academic center, or a community practice? You know, is finding ways to help patients with breast cancer and their families understand and better manage financial aspects of cancer care on a national basis the next approach? Dr. Kamaria Lee: Yes, I agree that that is a good approach, and I think the proactive component is also key. We know that patients that are coming to us with any cancer, but including breast cancer, some of them have already experienced a financial burden or have recently had a job loss before even coming to us and having the added distress of our direct costs and our indirect costs. So I think being proactive when they come to us in regards to the additional burden that their cancer treatments may cause is key to try to get ahead of things as much as we can, knowing that even before they've seen us, there might be many financial concerns that they've been navigating.  I think at the national level, that allows us to try to understand things at what might be a higher level of evidence and make sure that we're able to address this for a diverse cohort of patients. I know that sometimes the enrollment can be challenging at the national level when looking at financial toxicity, as then we're involving many different types of financial navigation partners and programs, and so that can maybe make it more complex to understand the best approaches, but I think that it can be done and can really bring our understanding of important financial toxicity interventions to the next level. And then the benefit to families with the proactive component is just allowing them to feel more informed, which can help decrease anticipation, anxiety related to anticipation, and allow them to help plan things moving forward for themselves and for the whole family. Dr. Hope Rugo: Those are really good points and I wonder, I was just thinking as you were talking, that having some kind of a process where you could attach to the electronic health record, you could click on the financial toxicity survey questions that somebody filled out, and then there would be a drop-down menu for interventions or connecting you to people within your clinic or even more broadly that would be potential approaches to manage that toxicity issue so that it doesn't impact care, you know, that people aren't going to decide not to take their medication or not to come in or not to get their labs because of the cost or the transportation or the home care issues that often are a big problem, even parking, as you pointed out, at the cancer center. And actually, we had a philanthropic donor when I was at UCSF who donated a large sum of money for patient assistance, and it was interesting to then have these sequential meetings with all the stakeholders to try and decide how you would use that money. You need a big program, you need to have a way of assessing the things you can intervene with, which is really tough. In that general vein, you know, what are the governmental, institutional, and provider-level actions that are required to help clinicians do our best to do no financial harm, given the fact that we're prescribing really expensive drugs that require a lot of visits when caring for our patients with breast cancer in the curative and in the metastatic setting? Dr. Kamaria Lee: At the governmental level, there are patient assistant programs that do exist, and I think that those can continue and can become more robust. But I also think one element of those is oftentimes the programs that we have at the government level or even institutional levels might have a lot of paperwork or be harder for people with lower literacy levels to complete. And so I think the government can really try to make sure that the paperwork that is given, within reason, with all the information they need, but that the paperwork can be minimized and that there can be clear instructions, as well as increased health insurance options and, you know, medical debt forgiveness as more broad just overall interventions that are needed. I think additionally, institutions that have clinical trials can help ensure that enrollment can be at geographically diverse locations. Some trials do reimburse for travel costs, of course, but sometimes then patients need the reimbursement sooner than it comes. And so I think there's also those considerations of more so upfront funds for patients involved in clinical trials if they're going to have to travel far to be enrolled in that type of care or trying to, again, make clinical trials more available at diverse locations.  I would also say that it's important that those who design clinical trials use what is known as the “Common Sense Oncology” approach of making sure that they're designed in minimizing the use of outcomes that might have a smaller clinical benefit but may have a high financial toxicity. And that also goes to what providers can do, of understanding what's most important to a particular patient in front of them, what outcomes and what benefit, or you know, how many additional months of progression-free survival or things like that might be important to a particular patient and then also educating them and discussing what the associated financial burden is just so that they have the full picture as they make an informed decision. Dr. Hope Rugo: As much as we know. I mean, I think that that's one of the big challenges is that as we prescribe these expensive drugs and often require multiple visits, even, you know, really outside of the clinical trial setting, trying to balance the benefit versus the financial toxicity can be a huge challenge. And that's a big area, I think, that we still need help with, you know. As we have more drugs approved in the early-stage setting and treatments that could be expensive, oral medications, for example, in our Medicare population where the share of cost may be substantial upfront, you know, with an upfront cost, how do we balance the benefits versus the risk? And I think you make an important point that discussing this individually with patients after we found out what the cost is. I think warning patients about the potential for large out-of-pocket cost and asking them to contact us when they know is one way around this. You know, patients feeling like they're sort of out there with a prescription, a recommendation from their doctor, they're scared of their cancer, and they have this huge share of cost that we didn't know about. That's one challenge, and I don't know if there's any suggestions you have about how one should approach that communication with the patient. Dr. Kamaria Lee: Yes, I think part of it is truly looking at each patient as an individual and asking how much they want to know, right? So we all know that patients, some who want more information, some want less, and so I think one way to approach that is asking them about how much information do they want to know, what is most helpful to them. And then also, knowing that if you're in a well-resourced setting that does have the social workers and financial navigators, also making sure it's integrated in the multidisciplinary setting and so that they know who they can go to for what, but also know that as a clinician, you're always happy for them to bring up their concerns and that if it's something that you're not aware of, that you will connect them to the correct multidisciplinary team members who can accurately provide that additional information. Dr. Hope Rugo: Do you have any other additional comments that you'd like to mention that we haven't covered? I think the idea of a financial toxicity screen with two questions that could be implemented at change of therapy or just periodically throughout the course of treatment would be a really great thing, but I think we do need as much information on potential interventions as possible because that's really what challenges people. It's like finding out information that you can't handle. Your article provides a lot of strategies there, which I think are great and can be discussed on a practice and institutional level and applied. Dr. Kamaria Lee: Yeah, I would just like to thank you for the opportunity to discuss such an important topic within oncology and specifically for our patients with breast cancer. I agree that it can feel overwhelming, both for clinicians and patients, to navigate this topic that many of us are not as familiar with, but I would just say that the area of financial toxicity is continuing to evolve as we gather more information on most successful interventions and that our patients can often inform us on, you know, what interventions are most needed as we see them. And so you can have your thinking about it as you see individual patients of, "This person mentioned this could be more useful to them." And so I think also learning from our patients in this space that can seem overwhelming and that maybe we weren't all trained on in medical school to best understand how to approach it and how to give our patients the best care, not just medically, but also financially. Dr. Hope Rugo: Thank you, Dr. Lee, for sharing your insights with us today. Our listeners will find a link, as I mentioned earlier, to the Ed Book article we discussed today in the transcript of this episode. I think it's very useful, a useful resource, and not just for providers, but for clinic staff overall. I think this can be of great value and help open the discussion as well. Dr. Kamaria Lee: Thank you so much, Dr. Rugo. Dr. Hope Rugo: And thanks to our listeners for joining us today. Please join us again next month on By the Book for more insightful views on topics you'll be hearing at Education Sessions from ASCO meetings and our deep dives into new approaches that are shaping modern oncology. Thank you. Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Follow today's speakers:       Dr. Hope Rugo  @hope.rugo  Dr. Kamaria Lee @ lee_kamaria Follow ASCO on social media:       @ASCO on X (formerly Twitter)       ASCO on Bluesky      ASCO on Facebook       ASCO on LinkedIn       Disclosures:      Dr. Hope Rugo:   Honoraria: Mylan/Viatris, Chugai Pharma  Consulting/Advisory Role: Napo Pharmaceuticals, Sanofi, Bristol Myer  Research Funding (Inst.): OBI Pharma, Pfizer, Novartis, Lilly, Merck, Daiichi Sankyo, AstraZeneca, Gilead Sciences, Hoffman La-Roche AG/Genentech, In., Stemline Therapeutics, Ambryx    Dr. Kamaria Lee: No relationships to disclose  

Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma and Biotech world.Vinay Prasad has returned to the FDA as the Chief of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, just 10 days after his mysterious departure. His return comes after a short "vacation" in California, and it is believed that the regulator convinced him to come back. Some speculate that Prasad's time away may have helped him gain a better understanding of the complexities involved in decision-making at the FDA, especially when it comes to ensuring the safety of patients and meeting the needs of various stakeholders. This unexpected turn of events has generated interest and optimism among industry insiders.Gilead remains positive about the prospects of its HIV prevention drug, despite uncertainties surrounding recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. The FDA has launched a new program to help pharmaceutical companies lower regulatory barriers to manufacturing in the U.S. Other news includes Dewpoint Therapeutics slashing headcount, Novartis rumored to be taking over RNA specialist Avidity, and Trilink Biotechnologies offering process development services for nucleic acid therapeutic development. Lotte Biologics is expanding its global manufacturing bases, while other companies like Bicycle, Tune, and Iovance are downsizing to conserve cash. The FDA is in flux, Pfizer is discussing pricing with Trump, and Merck is cutting jobs. Vertex's next-generation pain drug failed in trials despite strong Q2 earnings. Thank you for listening to Pharma and Biotech daily: your source for quick updates on the latest news in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

In der heutigen Folge sprechen die Finanzjournalisten Anja Ettel und Nando Sommerfeldt über das Wettrennen um die Fed-Spitze, einen ungewohnten Rheinmetall-Rücksetzer und starke Siemens-Zahlen. Außerdem geht es um Intel, Amgen, Merck, Abbvie, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Pinterest, Rheinmetall, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, Allianz, Ionos, Microsoft, Alphabet, Softbank und AirBnB. Wir freuen uns an Feedback über aaa@welt.de. Noch mehr "Alles auf Aktien" findet Ihr bei WELTplus und Apple Podcasts – inklusive aller Artikel der Hosts und AAA-Newsletter. Hier bei WELT: https://www.welt.de/podcasts/alles-auf-aktien/plus247399208/Boersen-Podcast-AAA-Bonus-Folgen-Jede-Woche-noch-mehr-Antworten-auf-Eure-Boersen-Fragen.html. Der Börsen-Podcast Disclaimer: Die im Podcast besprochenen Aktien und Fonds stellen keine spezifischen Kauf- oder Anlage-Empfehlungen dar. Die Moderatoren und der Verlag haften nicht für etwaige Verluste, die aufgrund der Umsetzung der Gedanken oder Ideen entstehen. Hörtipps: Für alle, die noch mehr wissen wollen: Holger Zschäpitz können Sie jede Woche im Finanz- und Wirtschaftspodcast "Deffner&Zschäpitz" hören. +++ Werbung +++ Du möchtest mehr über unsere Werbepartner erfahren? Hier findest du alle Infos & Rabatte! https://linktr.ee/alles_auf_aktien Impressum: https://www.welt.de/services/article7893735/Impressum.html Datenschutz: https://www.welt.de/services/article157550705/Datenschutzerklaerung-WELT-DIGITAL.html

Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal and Dr. Kimmie Ng discuss the disturbing rise of early-onset gastrointestinal cancers, the unique challenges faced by younger patients, and key research that is shedding light on potential drivers of early diagnoses in colorectal cancer. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: Hello, everyone. I'm Dr. Monty Pal, and I'm a medical oncologist and professor and vice chair of medical oncology at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles. I'm really delighted to welcome you all to the ASCO Daily News Podcast as the show's new host. I'll be bringing you discussions with leaders in the oncology space on a variety of topics. I've been working hard with the ASCO team on picking the ideal topics to bring to you, and I'm really delighted to introduce my first guest, a dear friend, Dr. Kimmie Ng, to discuss this huge problem that we're seeing nowadays of early-onset GI cancers. Dr. Ng is the associate chief of the Division of Gastrointestinal Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and she's an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. She serves as co-director of the Colon and Rectal Cancer Program. She's also the founding director of the Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber. I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about that today.  Just to note, our full disclosures are available in the transcript of this episode.  Dr Ng, it's so great to have you on the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Dr. Kimmie Ng: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: I'm going to refer to you as Kimmie, if you don't mind, for the rest of the podcast here. Please, we'll go by first names, if you don't mind.  Your research has really done so much to help improve our understanding of early-onset GI cancers. You've done a lot of work to increase awareness in this space. I don't think there's a couple of months that passes by when I don't see you on television on Good Morning America or other shows really broadcasting this really critical message. I think there's a certain sensitivity that we all have to this issue, right? I mean, because receiving a cancer diagnosis at any age is very challenging, but I'm sure that young patients who face a colorectal cancer diagnosis have some very unique challenges. Could you give us a sense of some of those? Dr. Kimmie Ng: I think the other reason why so many people are interested in this and feel touched by this is that it's not just gastrointestinal cancers that are increasing in young people, but actually a multitude of different cancers have been rising in young individuals. And while it is difficult at any age to receive a cancer diagnosis, we do all know that young people getting a diagnosis like this do face unique challenges. Studies have shown that over 80% have children under the age of 18 when they are diagnosed with colorectal cancer, for example, under the age of 50. And many experience career and education disruptions. They are in what we call the ‘sandwich generation,' where they're not only taking care of young families or starting to think about starting a young family, but they're also taking care of elderly parents. So it's just a very busy stage of life, and to then be facing a usually terminal cancer diagnosis, it is extremely challenging. The other factors that we've seen that seem to be unique or more prevalent in young patients is that there are higher levels of psychosocial distress, depression, and anxiety, and a majority of patients do need medical attention and treatment for those things, whether it's medication treatment or whether it's counseling or support from psychosocial oncologists. And so the other big issue is fertility. We know that so many of the treatments that these young patients receive do permanently and negatively impact fertility. And for a person who is young, who may still be trying to expand their family or again start a family, it is very important that these young patients do receive counseling about fertility preservation prior to starting treatment. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: You know, it's so interesting you bring this up, and I think about a patient who's in their 40s diagnosed with this disease. They're in the same demographic as I am, as you are. You know, I'm 44 years old, and you know, I'm thinking about my 11- and 12-year-old and my aging parents, right? I mean, the dilemmas that you highlighted are precisely what I'm facing in life, and it's so true, right? If I had to take my day-to-day and superimpose on that a colorectal cancer diagnosis, it would just be problematic in so many spheres, so many spheres. Dr. Kimmie Ng: Absolutely. And because we did think going into this, starting our Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center, that these patients will need unique supports, we did conduct a qualitative study and held some focus groups of young-onset colorectal cancer patients as well as their caregivers. And we really identified four primary themes that I think reflect a lot of the experience of patients with cancer, no matter what type of cancer when they're diagnosed young. And the first is the need, feeling overwhelmed by the healthcare system, and the need for patient navigation. As we know, a lot of these patients are previously healthy before they're facing this very serious diagnosis. The second is the need for peer-to-peer support, where they really value connecting with other young patients going through a similar experience. The third, we talked about already, the need for kind of formal psychosocial support in the form of psychosocial oncologists or psychiatrists or social workers. And the last is an interest in research. They are really very invested in getting germline genetic testing as well as somatic genomic profiling to help guide their therapy. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: That's really encouraging to hear that they themselves are interested in participating in research. I mean, obviously, that's a great way to move the field forward. I view your area of work here as being such a vexing problem because no matter what way you slice it, young-onset colorectal cancer still remains a relatively small proportion of all diagnoses. So how do you go about studying this phenomenon? I mean, it must be challenging to really sort of investigate underlying causes when ostensibly this is still a small piece of the pie. Dr. Kimmie Ng: That is such a great question and is one of the challenges me and my research team think about every single day. As you mentioned, one of the major barriers is that although these cancers are rising in young people, the absolute number of patients being diagnosed is still relatively small, and if it's going to take large scale epidemiologic studies to really understand, for example, what the dietary and lifestyle risk factors are, you need a considerable number of patients in order to have enough power to reach definitive conclusions.  And so this is where it is so important to collaborate. Any single institution is not going to see enough young-onset patients with colorectal cancer to be able to do this work on their own. And so I have really been intent on establishing an international prospective cohort study of patients with young-onset colorectal cancer so that we can increase the numbers of patients we partner with to try to answer these questions, but also so that we can study this on a global scale, because unfortunately this is not something that's just plaguing the United States. It is actually happening in multiple countries around the world. So that is one barrier.  The second, I would say, is that we think it's early life exposures to whatever environmental factor it is that's causing the rise that is likely contributing the most. And so if you imagine how difficult it would be to start studying individuals from when they're children through adolescence, through adulthood, and then all the way until a cancer diagnosis is obtained, a study like that would take too long, would cost too much, and really wouldn't be feasible. So we need to think of alternative ways to really try and answer this question of what is driving this rise in young-onset colorectal cancer. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: Honestly, Kimmie, this seems like almost an unfair question in the context of what you just mentioned, the challenges in terms of ascertaining causality, right? I'll tell you, I cheated a little bit ahead of this podcast. Kimmie and I had dinner together in Los Angeles a couple months ago. She came out to deliver a Presidential Lectureship at City of Hope. We were delighted to have her. And we did have a couple of thoughts exchanged over potential drivers of these early diagnoses, leaning on perhaps one of the things that you and I are both interested in, the microbiome. But amongst all these things, vitamin D, microbiome, etc., and I won't hold you to this, do you have at least a general sense of what might be contributing to this early-onset phenomenon? Dr. Kimmie Ng: Yeah, as we talked about during my visit there to City of Hope, we do hypothesize that it is a complex interaction between our exposome, which is everything we are exposed to in our environment, which does include diet and lifestyle factors, interacting with host immunity and antitumor immunity, and as well as the microbiome and shaping the composition and diversity of the gut microbiome that are likely interacting to increase susceptibility to colorectal cancer at a younger age. And I will say one of the biggest discoveries, if you will, about what might be driving young-onset colorectal cancer was published a few months ago in Nature. And that paper identified a specific mutational signature caused by the genotoxin colibactin, which is often produced by an organism called pks+ E. coli, as being much more prevalent in younger patients with colorectal cancer than older patients. And so while it doesn't explain necessarily all of young-onset colorectal cancer and why it's rising, it does give us a clue that the microbiome is likely very important in perhaps why this is rising in young people. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: After you mentioned it, I went back and dove deep into that paper. I was fascinated, fascinated by the content there. And this is just a massive exploration across thousands of patients worldwide. So, I mean, if there is a way to get at least some hint of what's driving this phenomenon, I suppose that's it. So thank you for pointing me in the direction of that manuscript. Now that we've addressed the issue of diagnosis, if we could just, you know, verge on the topic of treatment, right? And this is something that I struggle with. When I have my young patients with kidney cancer, I don't know necessarily that my treatment paradigm changes a whole heck of a lot. I guess what I will say is I might be a little bit more aggressive about concepts like definitive management with surgery. I suppose perhaps their treatment tolerance is a little bit higher. But tell us about the setting of young-onset colorectal cancer. Is the philosophy any different in terms of the actual sort of management of these patients? Dr. Kimmie Ng: That's a great question, and actually I was honored to participate in the first international consensus guidelines group to try to come up with uniform recommendations for how to treat young patients with colorectal cancer. And you know, the overall consensus is just as you said, the medical care of these young patients right now is really not that much different than that of an older patient with colorectal cancer. There are a couple of distinctions. One is that all young patients should get germline genetic testing, given that there is a higher prevalence of pathogenic germline variants when you are diagnosed at a young age. And the second is what we've already talked about, which is that all young patients should be referred for counseling about fertility preservation prior to starting treatment. But otherwise, the chemotherapy regimens recommended, you know, surgery, radiation, all of that seems very similar to older patients. I will say that because most of our young patients with colorectal cancer are diagnosed with left-sided cancers, including rectal cancers, where some of the treatment may be morbid and result in lifelong complications, we do consider de-escalation of therapy and try to consider the long-term implications when it's safe to do so and won't compromise outcomes. The other concerning thing is that younger patients don't necessarily have a better prognosis than older patients. And multiple studies have shown this, that even though we both often treat younger patients more aggressively – they more often receive multi-agent chemotherapy, and more often undergo surgery and radiation – their survival is not necessarily correspondingly better than an older patient with colorectal cancer. So that suggests to us that maybe these cancers are indeed biologically different and perhaps more aggressive or perhaps less responsive to treatment. And so that is some of the focus of our research too, to understand what is actually different about these cancers and how they respond to treatment. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: It's such a paradox, isn't it, right? Because you just brought this to my mind. I guess on the one hand, our younger patients may be able to tolerate perhaps a greater amount of chemotherapy, targeted therapy, etc. But you're absolutely right. I mean, they do sort of have these lingering issues with side effects that may persist for much longer than the 80- or 90-year-old that we're treating in the clinic. I mean, these tend to be sort of lifelong consequences and sequelae that they're dealing with. So that really does evolve to be a challenge. You've kind of changed my mindset there a little bit. Dr. Kimmie Ng: Yeah, I do think survivorship issues and long-term complications of therapy do need to be considered, especially for a young person who we hope will live a very, very long time. And so part of the work that our Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center is doing, we are participating in a pilot navigation study where we navigate patients to survivorship earlier than we typically would, perhaps, for an older patient. And that's so we can get a head start on addressing some of those potential complications of therapy and hopefully mitigate them so that they don't become an issue long term. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: Do you think there's a role for de-escalation studies formally in these young populations of patients? Dr. Kimmie Ng: I think de-escalation studies are important overall, and specifically for locally advanced rectal cancer, which again is one of the most common types of colorectal cancer diagnosed in our young patients, there are certain populations that may be able to forgo the radiation treatment to the pelvis, for example, and there's more and more patients who now may become candidates for non-operative management where they may not necessarily need to have their rectal cancer surgically removed. And elimination potentially of both of those modalities of treatment can really avoid some of the most serious and morbid complications that often occur with these treatments. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: Really interesting. Now, this is not and will never be a political podcast, but you know, obviously we're dealing with the consequences of changes on funding and so forth that have evolved over time. And I think it's worth sort of speculating how the landscape of research may change on account of that. Could you comment perhaps a little bit on how some of the funding cuts that we've seen recently at the NIH might affect the body of work that you're so integrally involved in? Dr. Kimmie Ng: I am honestly very worried about the current funding environment. Colorectal cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer among men and women in the United States and globally, and when you combine men and women together, the second leading cause of cancer death. But proportionally, we receive much less funding for colorectal cancer compared to other cancer types. And my thoughts have always been that perhaps this is because there is this stigma around colorectal cancer and maybe some of the symptoms associated with colorectal cancer. And so on top of that, to have additional challenges in obtaining funding, I worry what it will do to the pace of progress for especially young patients with this disease. Also, because of some new stipulations that perhaps international collaborations are being discouraged, I also worry about that aspect of it because young-onset colorectal cancer and gastrointestinal cancers in general is a global phenomenon happening in multiple countries around the world. And if we are to understand what the environmental factors are affecting the different rates of rise in these different countries, we do so much need that international collaboration. So yes, I am worried, and I do hope that conversations like this will spark an awareness of the need for more funding and continued funding into this disease. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: I will say that, and the audience can't see this because this is an audio program, but I'm wearing my Southwest Oncology shirt here, a SWOG, and it's one of the National Cancer Institute-funded cooperative groups. And you know, I was recently dismayed to find that, you know, funding got cut for international collaborations and enrollment in South America and Latin America. And this was traditionally actually a mainstay of our enrollment for many trials, including trials in rare cancers that present themselves in younger patients in the GU space. So, I completely agree with you. We've got to do something to address this funding issue to make sure that this body of work, both yours and mine, continues, without a doubt. Kimmie, this has been a delightful conversation. I really want to thank you for, you know, leading the charge in the young-onset colorectal cancer space, and you've done so much tremendous work here. Dr. Kimmie Ng: Thank you for having me. Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: If you value the insights that you hear on the ASCO Daily News Podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And again, thank you for joining us today. Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Find out more about today's speakers:   Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal @montypal Dr. Kimmie Ng @KimmieNgMD Follow ASCO on social media:    @ASCO on Twitter   ASCO on Bluesky  ASCO on Facebook    ASCO on LinkedIn    Disclosures:   Dr. Sumanta (Monty) Pal: Speakers' Bureau: MJH Life Sciences, IntrisiQ, Peerview Research Funding (Inst.): Exelixis, Merck, Osel, Genentech, Crispr Therapeutics, Adicet Bio, ArsenalBio, Xencor, Miyarsian Pharmaceutical Travel, Accommodations, Expenses: Crispr Therapeutics, Ipsen, Exelixis Dr. Kimmie Ng: Honoraria: Seagen, GlaxoSmithKline Consulting or Advisory Role: CytomX Therapeutics, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Revolution Medicines, Abbvie, Bayer, Pfizer, Agenus, Johnson & Johnson/Janssen, Etiome, AstraZeneca Research Funding (Inst.): Pharmavite, Janssen Other Relationship: JAMA

US President Trump said they are going to be putting a very large tariff on chips and semiconductors, which will be at approximately 100%, but added "if you're building in the US, there will be no charge."Crude futures declined yesterday amid Russia/Ukraine optimism following the discussion between the US and Russia which was said to have made progress and with President Trump intending to meet Russian President Putin as soon as next week.US President Trump said, regarding the Fed pick, that the interview process has started and it is probably down to three candidates, while he added that the two Kevins are very good, and a temporary governor is to be named in the next few days.APAC stocks traded mixed as reciprocal tariffs took effect overnight; European equity futures indicate a marginally higher cash market open with Euro Stoxx 50 futures up 0.4% after the cash market closed with gains of 0.3% on Wednesday.Looking ahead, highlights include German Trade (Jun), Industrial Output (Jun), Swedish CPIF (Jul), French Trade Balance (Jun), US Jobless Claims, Wholesale Sales (Jun) NY Fed SCE, Atalanta Fed GDP, BoE Announcement, MPR & DMP, CNB & Banxico Announcements, Speakers including BoE's Bailey & Fed's Bostic, Supply from Spain, France & US.Earnings from Trade Desk, Eli Lilly, ConocoPhillips, Vistra Energy, Peloton, Warner Bros, DataDog, Kenvue, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom, Allianz, Merck, Henkel, Rheinmetall, Deliveroo, Serco, Maersk, Zurich Insurance & WPP.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Dr. Adam Kinnaird of the University of Alberta joins Dr. Aly-Khan Lalani and Dr. Christopher Wallis to explore the evolution of prostate cancer diagnostics, from the limitations of transrectal ultrasound to the rise of MRI and micro-ultrasound. They unpack key trials, discuss real-world challenges like long MRI wait times in Canada, and examine how micro-ultrasound offers a scalable, point-of-care solution. This can't-miss episode charts a path toward faster and more accurate prostate cancer care.This podcast has been made possible through unrestricted financial support by Novartis, Bayer, Astellas, Tolmar, Ipsen, J&J, Merck, Pfizer, Eisai and AbbVie.The View on GU with Lalani & Wallis integrates key clinical data from major conferences and high impact publications, sharing meaningful take home messages for practising clinicians in the field of genitourinary (GU) cancers. Learn more about The View on GU: theviewongu.ca

A CVC masterclass from Bill Taranto, Founder and President of Merck's Global Health Innovation Fund, a $600M fund that is considered one of the most impactful corporate venture funds in the world. Bill has over 20 years of healthcare investing and is focused on digital health companies transforming the future of care. Bill was just named to the Global Corporate Venturing Power List for the 14th time. We talk about the dual mandate to predict and prepare as well as the unique structure he has created which includes multiple levers like accelerators, studios, the growth equity fund, and a private equity roll-up function. We talk about the right relationship with the corporate parent, flying too close to the sun in the strategic/financial balance and why communication is often what determines success and makes innovation tangible for large organizations.

Good morning from Pharma and Biotech Daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma and Biotech world.##Breaking News: Pfizer announces successful COVID-19 vaccine trialsIn a groundbreaking announcement, Pfizer revealed that their COVID-19 vaccine candidate has shown to be over 90% effective in preventing the virus. This news brings hope to the world as we continue to battle the global pandemic.##FDA approves new treatment for Alzheimer's diseaseThe FDA has approved a new treatment for Alzheimer's disease, marking a significant advancement in the fight against this debilitating condition. This approval could potentially change the lives of millions of patients and their families.##Johnson & Johnson recalls baby powder due to asbestos contaminationJohnson & Johnson has issued a voluntary recall of its baby powder products after trace amounts of asbestos were found in samples. This news has raised concerns about the safety of talc-based products and the potential risks they pose to consumers.##Novartis announces major breakthrough in cancer researchNovartis has made a significant breakthrough in cancer research with the development of a new targeted therapy that has shown promising results in clinical trials. This innovation has the potential to revolutionize cancer treatment and improve outcomes for patients.##Merck receives FDA approval for new diabetes drugMerck has received FDA approval for a new diabetes drug that offers another option for patients struggling to manage their condition. This approval expands treatment options and provides hope for those living with diabetes.##Roche acquires biotech company in multi-billion dollar dealRoche has announced the acquisition of a biotech company in a multi-billion dollar deal that will expand its portfolio and strengthen its position in the market. This strategic move demonstrates Roche's commitment to innovation and growth in the biotech sector.##Incyte collaborates with academic research center to develop new therapiesIncyte has formed a collaboration with an academic research center to develop new therapies for a range of diseases, including cancer and inflammatory conditions. This partnership brings together expertise from both sectors to accelerate the discovery and development of innovative treatments.##Overall, these recent developments in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry highlight the ongoing efforts to advance healthcare and improve patient outcomes. From groundbreaking vaccines to innovative therapies, these advancements are shaping the future of medicine and providing hope for patients worldwide.

In this episode, Mark Ledlow and Benjamin Whitfield, a seasoned security professional with a military and agency background and a former CIA, delve into the journeys of various figures transitioning from government roles to entrepreneurship, particularly focusing on Mike and Chris's post-CIA careers in the security industry and bourbon production. The conversation touches on the unique skill sets developed within the CIA, the importance of trust and networking among former agents, and the experiences that shaped their professional lives. Benjamin also shares personal anecdotes from his time with the CIA, including his harrowing experience during the terrorist attack on the American Consulate in Jetta, Saudi Arabia. The discussion provides insights into the evolving business and cultural landscape in the Middle East and how these changes impact personal and professional security.Learn about all this and more in this episode of The Fearless Mindset Podcast.KEY TAKEAWAYSReinvention is possible at any stage—skills from one career can fuel success in another. Trust and relationships are central in security and intelligence work. Bureaucratic responses can drive talented people to seek impact elsewhere. Cultural adaptation and respect are vital for success in international business. Generational shifts are changing norms in places like Saudi Arabia.QUOTES“Trust is super important in that space.” “I really have found this home in the private sector for 20 plus years now, where I can protect our people, our facilities, our operations in that appropriate way.” “It's all heavily relationship based.” “Reinvention is a skillset that both he and Chris and others have developed over a long career.”Get to know more about Benjamin Whitfield through the links below.https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminwhitfield/To hear more episodes of The Fearless Mindset podcast, you can go to https://the-fearless-mindset.simplecast.com/ or listen to major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc. You can also subscribe to the Fearless Mindset YouTube Channel to watch episodes on video.

Good morning from Pharma and Biotech Daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma and Biotech world. BioNTech is focusing on infectious diseases as vaccine rates drop, with expectations that the US COVID-19 vaccination rate will decrease slightly. Glioblastoma research is seeing increased funding and interest from companies like Merck and Jazz Pharmaceuticals. The FDA's rejection of Replimmune's melanoma drug, despite staff consensus, has caused a drop in the company's stock. Sarepta and Capricor learned of regulatory decisions through media leaks, causing confusion for patients and families. Trilink Biotechnologies offers process development services for nucleic acid therapeutic development. Lotte Biologics is expanding globally, Allogene is discontinuing an immunosuppressive antibody after a patient death, and NIH funding cuts are impacting biotech. Pharmas are increasing investment in AI despite challenges in the industry. Trump urges pharma companies to address drug pricing, while Merck plans to cut 6,000 jobs to save $3 billion.

Audio roundup of selected biopharma industry content from Scrip over the business week ended August 1, 2025. In this episode: EU tariff deal leaves questions for pharma; Prasad's CBER exit could bode well for genetic medicines; Winrevair grows but Merck & Co. plans cost cuts; Novo Nordisk selects new CEO; and a look at obesity past the GLP-1s. Story links: https://insights.citeline.com/scrip/podcasts/scrips-five-must-know-things/quick-listen-scrips-five-must-know-things-AOJAANRHLNCPNNLNGVVKA3HEAE/ This episode was produced with the help of AI text-to-voice and voice emulation tools. Playlist: soundcloud.com/citelinesounds/sets/scrips-five-must-know-things

Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma e Biotech world.Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel has stated that the company is not interested in pursuing mergers and acquisitions, preferring to focus on research and development partnerships instead. Former President Trump has threatened 17 big pharmaceutical companies with a deadline to lower drug prices or face government intervention. Regeneron faces regulatory issues affecting decision dates for high-dose Eylea, while Moderna has won a UK patent battle against Pfizer and BioNTech. After the removal of FDA chief Dr. Prasad, Dr. Makary is seeking better alignment between drug and biologic approvals at the agency. Alnylam's impressive sales of Amvuttra ATTR-CM have led to a surge in stock prices, while Merck is aiming to save $3 billion through job cuts. Moderna is also cutting 10% of its global workforce. Recent FDA approvals for myeloma and Alzheimer's treatments, as well as updates on layoffs and pipeline developments in the biotech industry are also making headlines.

https://engagedly.com/podcast/rebuilding-trust-in-equity-and-inclusion-with-celeste-warren-episode-84/Celeste Warren is a globally recognized DEI strategist, author, and former Vice President and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Merck. With nearly 40 years of experience in global HR, Celeste is a leading voice on how equity transforms organizations from the inside out. Her journey began as a journalist uncovering pay inequities—and evolved into a powerful career in DEI leadership, helping companies dismantle systemic barriers and build more inclusive cultures. She is the author of The Truth About Equity: What It Really Is, What It Isn't, and Why Everyone Wins When We Get It Right, a book that challenges misunderstandings about equity and offers a path forward for individuals and organizations alike.Learn more at https://www.crwdiversity.comEpisode Overview:This episode explores the real meaning of equity in the workplace and why it's essential for both organizational performance and human dignity. Celeste Warren joins host Sri Chellappa to discuss the DEI backlash, the misconceptions surrounding equity, and what leaders must do to build truly inclusive and high-performing teams.Key Discussion Points:Guest Introduction and Career Journey: Celeste shares her background—from discovering pay disparities in journalism to becoming a global DEI leader. Her passion for driving equity across all dimensions of identity sets the foundation for the conversation.What Equity Really Means: Celeste explains the key differences between equity and equality, arguing that equity isn't about giving some people more—it's about giving everyone what they need to succeed.Why DEI Is Facing Backlash: She unpacks the political and societal pushback against DEI, emphasizing that much of it stems from misunderstanding or resistance to systemic change.The “Three-Rock” Analogy: Using a visual metaphor, Celeste describes how equity programs help level the playing field for everyone—and why those who've always had privilege often fail to see the barriers others face.DEI as Business and Leadership Strategy: Celeste reframes DEI not as a “nice to have,” but as fundamental to leadership, talent development, and customer understanding. She connects equity to performance, innovation, and long-term sustainability.Global Equity Challenges: Reflecting on her work at Merck and Kraft Foods, Celeste shares how she tailored DEI strategies for global audiences while respecting local cultural nuances.A Call to Action for Today's Leaders: Celeste urges leaders to meet people where they are, embrace inclusive practices, and recognize equity as essential to unlocking collective success.

Good morning from Pharma and Biotech daily: the podcast that gives you only what's important to hear in Pharma e Biotech world.Vinay Prasad's departure from CBER has analysts anticipating a more traditional successor, while GSK streamlines its pipeline and pledges billions in US investments. Susan Monarez is now the confirmed CDC director, and the top biopharma venture capital raises of H1 2025 are summarized. Despite challenges like layoffs and market fluctuations, GSK remains committed to investing in the US despite tariffs. Other headlines include Madrigal's potential $2 billion investment, Biogen and Eisai's Alzheimer's drug update, and Novo Nordisk's new leadership. Trilink Biotechnologies is offering self-amplifying RNA constructs for potential therapeutic advancements.AI biotech companies have secured substantial funding in the first half of 2025, with continued investment pouring into startups within the industry. The top five biopharma venture capital raises of this period are highlighted. There is confusion surrounding Ira's definition of 'drug,' potentially hindering companies from pursuing approval for new formulations and indications. Vinay Prasad's departure from the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, following controversies related to Sarepta, has raised concerns among developers. Despite challenges, four biotech companies are successfully launching their products independently.Over 260 million people are impacted by rare diseases, emphasizing the need for faster evidence generation through global real-world data. GSK's commitment to investing in the US, Merck's cost-cutting measures to support its launch schedule, and Novo Nordisk's new leadership are also highlighted. The FDA has updated regulations regarding Sarepta's DMD gene therapy, making it available for ambulatory patients. Adaptimmune anticipates significant staff reductions following a cell therapy asset sale. Stay tuned for more updates on the latest developments in the biopharma industry.

“Manager and leader”? What's the difference. During my conversation this time with Scott Hanton, our guest, we will discuss this very point along with many other fascinating and interesting subjects. As Scott tells us at the beginning of this episode he grew up asking “why” about most anything you can think of. He always was a “why” asker. As he tells it, unlike many children who grow out of the phase of asking “why” he did not. He still asks “why” to this very day.   At the age of 13 Scott decided that he wanted to be a chemist. He tells us how this decision came about and why he has always stayed with it. Scott received his bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Michigan State and his PHD from the University of Wisconsin. Again, why he changed schools for his PHD work is an interesting story. As you will see, Scott tells stories in a unique and quite articulate way.   After his university days were over Scott went to work, yes as a chemist. He tells us about this and how after 20 years with one company how and why he moved to another company and somewhat out of constant lab work into some of the management, business and leadership side of a second company. He stayed there for ten years and was laid off during the pandemic. Scott then found employment as the editorial director of Lab Management Magazine where he got to bring his love of teaching to the forefront of his work.   My hour with Scott gives us all many insights into management, leadership and how to combine the two to create a strong teaming environment. I believe you will find Scott's thoughts extremely poignant and helpful in everything that you do.     About the Guest:   Scott Hanton is the Editorial Director of Lab Manager. He spent 30 years as a research chemist, lab manager, and business leader at Air Products and Intertek. Scott thrives on the challenges of problem-solving. He enjoys research, investigation, and collaboration. Scott is a people-centric, servant leader. He is motivated by developing environments where people can grow and succeed, and crafting roles for people that take advantage of their strengths.   Scott earned a BS in chemistry from Michigan State University and a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is an active member of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Society of Mass Spectrometry (ASMS), and the Association of Lab Managers (ALMA). As a scientist Scott values curiosity, innovation, progress, and delivery of results. Scott has always been motivated by questions beginning with why. Studying physical chemistry in graduate school offered the opportunity to hone answers to these questions. As a professional scientist, Scott worked in analytical chemistry specializing in MALDI mass spectrometry and polymer characterization.   At Scott married his high school sweetheart, and they have one son. Scott is motivated by excellence, happiness, and kindness. He most enjoys helping people and solving problems. Away from work, Scott enjoys working outside in the yard, playing strategy games, and participating in different discussion groups.   Scott values having a growth mindset and is a life-long learner. He strives to learn something new everyday and from everyone. One of the great parts of being a trained research scientist is that failure really isn't part of his vocabulary. He experiments and either experiences success or learns something new. He values both individual and organizational learning.   Scott's current role at Lab Manager encompasses three major responsibilities: ·      Writing articles and giving presentations to share his experience with lab managers. ·      Driving the creation and growth of the Lab Manager Academy (https://labmanageracademy.com/) that currently contains three certificate programs: lab management, lab safety management, and lab quality management. ·      Helping people through his knowledge of science, scientists, management, and leadership. He is very happy sharing the accumulated wisdom of his experiences as a researcher, lab supervisor, and lab manager. Each article posted on Lab Manager addresses a decision that a lab manager needs to make. Lab management is full of decision-making, so helping people make better, faster, more complete decisions is very satisfying. Ways to connect with Scott:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-hanton/   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset where inclusion diversity and the unexpected meet, and mostly we get to deal with the unexpected, as opposed to inclusion or diversity. But that's okay, because unexpected is what makes life fun, and our guest today, Scott Hanton, will definitely be able to talk about that. Scott has been a research chemist. He comes from the chemistry world, so he and I in the past have compared notes, because, of course, I come from the physics world, and I love to tell people that the most important thing I learned about physics was that, unlike Doc Brown, although I do know how to build a bomb, unlike Doc Brown from Back to the Future, I'm not dumb enough to try to go steal fissionable material from a terrorist group to build the bomb. So, you know, I suppose that's a value, value lesson somewhere. But anyway, I am really glad that you're all here with us today, and we have lots to talk about. Scott, as I said, was in chemistry and research chemist, and now is the editorial supervisor and other things for a magazine called lab manager, and we will talk about that as well. So Scott, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad   Scott Hanton ** 02:38 you're here. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation with you today.   Michael Hingson ** 02:43 Well, I think it'll be a lot of fun, and looking forward to it. Now, you're in Michigan, right?   Scott Hanton ** 02:48 That's right. I live in South Lyon, Michigan,   Michael Hingson ** 02:51 ah, what's the weather back there today?   Scott Hanton ** 02:55 It's probably about 55 degrees and cloudy   Michael Hingson ** 02:58 here today. Well, it's still fairly sunny here, and we're actually, according to my iPhone, at 71 so it was up around 80 earlier in the week, but weather changes are still going to bring some cold for a while   Scott Hanton ** 03:15 in here in Michigan, I visited a customer earlier this week, and I drove by about 1000 orange barrels on the highway, which means it's spring, because there's only two seasons in Michigan, winter and construction.   Michael Hingson ** 03:29 There you go. Yeah, I know. I went to the University of California, Irvine, UCI. And if you ask somebody who doesn't know that UCI stands for University of California at Irvine. If you ask them what UCI stands for, they'll tell you, under construction indefinitely. Sounds right? Yeah. Well, it's been doing it ever since I was there a long time ago, and they they continue to grow. Now we're up to like 32,000 fresh, or excuse me, undergraduates at the university. And when I was there, there were 2700 students. So it's grown a little. That's   Scott Hanton ** 04:05 a lot of change. I'm used to big universities. I'm a graduate of both Michigan State and the University of Wisconsin. So these are big places.   Michael Hingson ** 04:13 Wow, yeah. So you're used to it. I really enjoyed it when it was a small campus. I'm glad I went there, and that was one of the reasons that caused me to go there, was because I knew I could probably get a little bit more visibility with instructors, and that would be helpful for me to get information when they didn't describe things well in class. And it generally worked out pretty well. So I can't complain a lot. Perfect. Glad it worked well for you, it did. Well, why don't you start, if you would, by telling us kind of about the early Scott growing up and all that sort of stuff.   Scott Hanton ** 04:49 I grew up in Michigan, in a town called Saginaw. I was blessed with a family that loved me and that, you know, I was raised in a very. Supportive environment. But young Scott asked, Why about everything you know, the way kids do? Yeah, right. And my mom would tell you that when I was a kid, why was my most favorite word? And most kids outgrow that. I never did, yeah, so Me neither. I still ask why all the time. It's still my most favorite word, and it caused me to want to go explore the sciences, because what I found, as I learned about science, was that I could get answers to why questions better in science than in other places.   Michael Hingson ** 05:34 Yeah, makes sense. So what kinds of questions did you ask about why? Well, I asked   Scott Hanton ** 05:43 all kinds of questions about why, like, why are we having that for dinner? Or, why is my bedtime so early? Those questions didn't have good answers, at least from my perspective, right? But I also asked questions like, why is grass green, and why is the sky blue? And studying physical chemistry at Michigan State answered those questions. And so   Michael Hingson ** 06:03 how early did you learn about Rayleigh scattering? But that's you know?   Scott Hanton ** 06:07 Well, I learned the basic concepts from a really important teacher in my life, Mr. Leeson was my seventh grade science teacher, and what I learned from him is that I could ask questions that weren't pertinent to what he was lecturing about, and that taught me a lot about the fact that science was a lot bigger than what we got in the curriculum or in the classroom. And so Mr. Leeson was a really important person in my development, and showed me that there was that science was a lot bigger than I thought it was as a student, but I didn't really learn about rally scattering until I got to college.   Michael Hingson ** 06:43 But at the same time, it sounds like he was willing to allow you to grow and and learn, which so many people aren't willing to do. They're too impatient.   Scott Hanton ** 06:58 He was a first year teacher the year I had him so he hadn't become cynical yet. So it was great to just be able to stay after class and ask him a question, or put my hand up in class and ask him a question. He also did a whole series of demonstrations that were fabulous and made the science come to life in a way that reading about it doesn't stir the imagination. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 07:23 I had teachers that did that too. I remember very well my freshman general science teacher in high school, Mr. Dills, and one day, and he loved to do kind of unique things, just to push the boundaries of students a little bit. He came in one day and he said, I got a pop quiz for everybody, which doesn't help me, because the pop quiz was in print, but he handed it out. And then he took me to the back of the room, and he said, You're not going to really be able to do this quiz. Let me tell you why. And he said, Oh, and one thing he said is, just be sure you follow all the instructions and you'll be fine on the test to everybody. He brought me back to the back of the room. He says, Well, here's the deal. He says, if people really read the instructions, what they'll do is they'll read the instruction that says, Read all the questions before you start answering, and if you get to the last question, it says answer only the first question, which is what is your name and and sure enough, of course, people didn't read the instructions. And he said, so I wouldn't be able to really deal with you with that one, with that whole thing, just because it wouldn't work well. And I said, I understand, but he loved to make students think, and I learned so much about the whole concept of realizing the need to observe and be observant in all that you do. And it was lessons like that from him that really helped a lot with that. For me,   Scott Hanton ** 08:48 I had a high school chemistry teacher named Mrs. Schultz, and the first experiment that we did in her class, in the first week of classes, was she wanted us to document all of the observations that we could make about a burning candle. And I was a hot shot student. Thought I, you know, owned the world, and I was going to ace this test. And, you know, I had maybe a dozen observations about a burning candle, and thought I had done a great job describing it, until she started sharing her list, and she probably had 80 observations about a burning candle, and it taught me the power of observation and the need to talk about the details of those observations and to be specific about what the observations were. And that experiment seems simple, light a candle and tell me what you see. Yeah, but that lesson has carried on with me now for more than approaching 50 years.   Michael Hingson ** 09:47 Let's see, as I recall, if you light a candle, what the center of the flame is actually pretty cool compared to the outside. It's more hollow. Now I wouldn't be able to easily tell that, because. Is my my process for observing doesn't really use eyesight to do that, so I I'm sure there are other technologies today that I could use to get more of that information. But   Scott Hanton ** 10:12 I'm also sure that that experiment could be re crafted so that it wasn't so visual, yeah, right, that there could be tactile experiments to tell me about observations or or audible experiments about observation, where you would excel in ways that I would suffer because I'm so visually dominant. The   Michael Hingson ** 10:33 issue, though, is that today, there's a lot more technology to do that than there was when I was in school and you were in school, but yeah, I think there is a lot available. There's a company called Independence Science, which is actually owned and run by Dr Cary sapollo. And Carrie is blind, and he is a blind chemist, and he wanted to help develop products for blind people to be able to deal with laboratory work. So he actually worked with a company that was, well, it's now Vernier education systems. They make a product called LabQuest with something like 80 different kinds of probes that you can attach to it, and the LabQuest will will provide visual interpretations of whatever the probes are showing carry, and independent science took that product and made it talk, so that There is now a Talking LabQuest. And the reality is that all those probes became usable because the LabQuest became accessible to be able to do that, and they put a lot of other things into it too. So it's more than just as a talking device, a lab device. It's got a periodic table in it. It's got a lot of other kinds of things that they just put in it as well. But it's really pretty cool because it now makes science a whole lot more accessible. I'm going to have to think about the different kinds of probes and how one could use that to look at a candle. I think that'd be kind of fun.   Scott Hanton ** 12:15 And it's just awesome to hear that there's innovation and space to make science more available to everybody. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 12:23 the real problem that we face is the one that we mostly always have faced, which is societal attitudes, as opposed to really being or not being able to do the experiments, is people think we can't, and that's the barrier that we always, usually have to overcome.   Scott Hanton ** 12:39 What I find in my time as a coach, mentor, supervisor, is that if somebody believes they can't do it, they can't do it. Yeah. And so it's often about overcoming their own mental limitations, the limitations that they've placed on themselves,   Michael Hingson ** 12:56 and that's right, or unfortunately, the limitations that other people place on us, and we, all too often and weigh too much, buy into those limitations. So it's it is something that we, especially in the sciences, should recognize that we shouldn't be doing so much of. I know that when I was at UC Irvine as a graduate student, I learned once that there was a letter in my file that a professor wrote. Fortunately, I never had him as a professor, but it and I was in my master's program at the time in physics, and this guy put a letter in my file saying that no blind person could ever absorb the material to get an advanced degree in physics at the University. Just put that in there, which is so unfortunate, because the real thing that is demonstrated there is a prejudice that no scientist should ever have.   Scott Hanton ** 13:51 I'm hopeful that as you graduated, there was a retraction letter in your file as well,   Michael Hingson ** 13:57 not that I ever heard, but yeah. Well, I'd already gotten my bachelor's degree, but yeah. But you know, things happen, but it is a it is a societal thing, and society all too often creates limitations, and sometimes we don't find them right away, but it is one of the big issues that, in general, we have to deal with. And on all too often, society does some pretty strange things because it doesn't understand what science is all about. I know when we were dealing with covid, when it all started, leaving the conspiracy theorists out of it. One of the things that I learned was that we have all these discussions about AI, if you will. But AI was one of the primary mechanisms that helped to develop the mRNA vaccines that are now still the primary things that we use to get vaccinated against covid, because they the artificial intelligence. I'm not sure how artificial. It is, but was able to craft what became the vaccine in a few days. And scientists acknowledged, if they had to do it totally on their own, it would take years to have done what AI did in a few days.   Scott Hanton ** 15:13 The AI technology is amazing and powerful, but it's not new. No, I met a person who shared her story about AI investigations and talked about what she was doing in this field 30 years ago. Yeah, in her master's work. And you know, I knew it wasn't brand new, but I didn't really realize how deep its roots went until I talked to her.   Michael Hingson ** 15:37 I worked as my first jobs out of college with Ray Kurzweil, who, of course, nowadays, is well known for the singularity and so on. But back then, he developed the first reading machine that blind people could use to read printed material. And one of the things that he put into that machine was the ability, as it scanned more material, to learn and better recognize the material. And so he was doing machine learning back in the 1970s   Scott Hanton ** 16:07 right? And all of this is, you know, as Newton said on the shoulders of giants, right, right? He said it a bit cynically, but it's still true that we all in science, we are learning from each other. We're learning from the broader community, and we're integrating that knowledge as we tackle the challenges that we are exploring.   Michael Hingson ** 16:27 So what got you to go into chemistry when you went into college?   Scott Hanton ** 16:33 That's a good question. So when I was 13 years old, I went on a youth a church group youth trip to another city, and so they split us up, and there were three of us from our group that stayed overnight in a host family. And at dinner that night, the father worked in a pharmaceutical company, and he talked about the work he was doing, and what he was doing was really synthetic chemistry around small molecule drug discovery. And for me, it was absolutely fascinating. I was thrilled at that information. I didn't know any scientists growing up, I had no adult input other than teachers about science, and I can remember going back home and my parents asking me how the trip went. And it's like, it's fantastic. I'm going to be a chemist. And they both looked at me like, what is that? How do you make money from it? How do you get that? My dad was a banker. My mom was a school teacher. They had no scientific background, but that that one conversation, such serendipity, right? One conversation when I was 13 years old, and I came home and said, I'm going to be a chemist, and I've never really deviated from that path. Did you have other siblings? Younger brother and another younger sister?   Michael Hingson ** 17:54 Okay? Did they go into science by any remote chance?   Scott Hanton ** 17:58 Not at all. So they were both seventh grade teachers for more than 30 years. So my brother taught math and English, and my sister teaches social studies.   Michael Hingson ** 18:10 Well, there you go. But that is also important. I actually wanted to teach physics, but jobs and other things and circumstances took me in different directions, but I think the reality is that I ended up going into sales. And what I realized, and it was partly because of a Dale Carnegie sales course I took, but I realized that good sales people are really teachers, because they're really teaching people about products or about things, and they're also sharp enough to recognize what their products might or might not do to help a customer. But that, again, not everyone does that, but so I figure I still was teaching, and today, being a public speaker, traveling the world, talking, of course, about teamwork and other things, it's still all about teaching.   Scott Hanton ** 18:57 I think I've always been a teacher, and if you talk to my coworkers along the way, I enjoy helping people. I enjoy sharing my knowledge. There's always been a teacher inside but only in this job as the editorial director at lab manager have I really been able to do it directly. So we've developed what we call the lab manager Academy, and I create e learning courses to help lab managers be more successful, and it's been a passion project for me, and it's been a load of fun.   Michael Hingson ** 19:30 And it doesn't get better than that. It's always great when it's a load of fun, yes,   Scott Hanton ** 19:35 well, so you left college and you got a bachelor's and a master's degree, right? No masters for me, that step you went right to the old PhD, yeah. So I went straight. I went graduated from Michigan State. So Michigan State was on terms back in those days. So graduated in June, got married in July, moved to Wisconsin in August. To graduate school at the end of August at the University of Wisconsin. Okay? And my second year as a graduate student, my professor asked me, Do you want to stop and complete a master's? And I said, Wait, tell me about this word stop. And he said, Well, you'd have to finish the Master's requirements and write a thesis, and that's going to take some time. And I said, Do I have to and he said, No, and I don't recommend it. Just keep going forward and finish your PhD. So that's   Michael Hingson ** 20:30 and what does your wife do?   Scott Hanton ** 20:33 So my wife also is in the graduate program at the University of Wisconsin, and she decided that a master's degree was the right answer for her, because she didn't want to be a PhD scientist in XYZ narrow band of science. She wanted to be a master of chemistry. Okay, and so we took different paths through graduate school, but each of us took the path that worked best for us, and each pass has great value, so we're both happy with the choices that we made,   Michael Hingson ** 21:06 and complement each other and also give you, still lots of great things to talk about over dinner.   Scott Hanton ** 21:12 Absolutely. And she took that master's degree, went into the pharmaceutical industry and largely behaved as a librarian in her first part of her career, she wasn't called a librarian, but what she really did was a lot of information integrating, and then moved into the Library Group, and was a corporate librarian for a long time, and then a community librarian. So that path worked brilliantly for her. She also has a Masters of Library Science. So I have one PhD. She has two Master's degree. I have one bachelor's degree. She has two bachelor's degree.   Michael Hingson ** 21:50 Oh, so you can have interesting discussions about who really progressed further,   21:54 absolutely.   Michael Hingson ** 21:57 Well, that's, that's, that's cute, though. Well, I I got my bachelor's and master's. My wife, who I didn't meet until years later, wanted to be a librarian, but she ended up getting a a Master's at USC in so in sociology and and ended up getting a teaching credential and going into teaching, and taught for 10 years, and then she decided she wanted to do something different, and became a travel agent, which she had a lot of fun with. That is different, it is, but she enjoyed it, and along the way, then we got married. It was a great marriage. She was in a wheelchair her whole life. So she read, I pushed, worked out well, complimentary skills, absolutely, which is the way, way it ought to be, you know, and we had a lot of fun with it. Unfortunately, she passed now two and a half years ago, but as I tell people, we were married 40 years, and I'm sure she's monitoring me from somewhere, and if I misbehave, I'm going to hear about it, so I try to just behave. Sounds like good advice. Yeah, probably certainly the safe way to go. But we, we, we had lots of neat discussions, and our our activities and our expertise did, in a lot of ways, complement each other, so it was a lot of fun. And as I said, she went to USC. I enjoyed listening to USC football because I thought that that particular college team had the best announcers in the business, least when when I was studying in Southern California, and then when we got married, we learned the the day we got married, the wedding was supposed to start at four, and it didn't start till later because people weren't showing up for the wedding. And we learned that everybody was sitting out in their cars waiting for the end of the USC Notre Dame game. And we knew that God was on our side when we learned that SC beat the snot out of Notre Dame. So there you go. Yeah. Yeah. Oh gosh, the rivalries we face. So what did you do after college?   Scott Hanton ** 24:09 So did my PhD at the University of Wisconsin. And one of the nice things, a fringe benefit of going to a big, important program to do your PhD, is that recruiters come to you. And so I was able to do 40 different, four, zero, 40 different interviews on campus without leaving Madison. And one of those interviews was with a company called Air Products. And that worked out, and they hired me. And so we moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania to go to work. I went to work at Air Products and and Helen found a role in the pharmaceutical industry at Merck. And so we did that for a long time. I was initially a research expert, a PhD expert doing lasers and materials and analytical stuff. And over the years. I progressed up the ladder from researcher to supervisor to what did we call it, group head to Section Manager, to operations manager, and ultimately to General Manager.   Michael Hingson ** 25:13 Well, at least being in Allentown, you were close to a Cracker Barrel restaurant. Yes, that is true. That was the closest to one to where we lived in New Jersey, so we visited it several times. That's how I know   Scott Hanton ** 25:26 about it. Maybe we were there at the same time. Michael, maybe this isn't our first. It's   Michael Hingson ** 25:31 very possible. But we enjoyed Cracker Barrel and enjoyed touring around Pennsylvania. So I should have asked, What prompted you to go to the University of Wisconsin to do your your graduate work, as opposed to staying in Michigan. So   Scott Hanton ** 25:47 my advisor at Michigan State, our advisor at Michigan State, told us, here's the top five schools, graduate programs in chemistry, apply to them all. Go to the one you get into. And so I got into three. Helen got into two. The one that was the same was Wisconsin. So that's where we went, yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 26:09 Well, then no better logic and argument than that.   Scott Hanton ** 26:14 It was a great Madison. Wisconsin is a beautiful city. It one of the things I really liked about the chemistry program there then, and it's still true now, is how well the faculty get along together so many collaborative projects and just friendliness throughout the hallways. And yes, they are all competing at some level for grant support, but they get along so well, and that makes it for a very strong community,   Michael Hingson ** 26:41 and it probably also means that oftentimes someone who's applying for something can enlist support from other people who are willing to help.   Scott Hanton ** 26:50 And as a graduate student, it meant that I had more than one professor that I could go to my advisor. There was a whole group of advisors who ran joint group meetings and would give us advice about our work or our writing or our approach, or just because we needed a pep talk, because completing a PhD is hard. Yeah, right, so that community was really important to me, and it's something I took away that when I started my industrial career, I had seen the value of community, and I wanted to build stronger communities wherever I went, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 27:26 So what does a company, does air products do   Scott Hanton ** 27:31 that's sort of in the name, right? They're an industrial gas company. Got some of their big, biggest products are taking air and separating it into its components of nitrogen, oxygen, oxygen, argon, whatever, right? But at that time, they also had a chemicals business and a semiconductor business, or electronics business. So there was a lot of chemistry going on, although a lot of my work colleagues were chemical engineers who were working on the gasses side of the business, we had significant number of chemistry, sorts material science, sorts of people who are working on the chemicals side. Now, over time, Air Products divested those businesses, and now it's much more of a true industrial gas company. But I had the opportunity to work in an integrated science company that did all sorts of things.   Michael Hingson ** 28:23 Yeah, and as as we know, certainly a little helium never hurt anyone.   Scott Hanton ** 28:30 No little helium, you know, raises people's spirits, it   Michael Hingson ** 28:34 does and their voices, it does. I I've visited helium tanks many times at UC Irvine when they had liquid helium, which was certainly a challenge because of how cold it had to be. But occasionally we would open a valve and little cold but useful helium gas would escape   Scott Hanton ** 28:56 very cold. Please be safe. Cryogens are are dangerous materials, and we gotta make sure we handle them with due respect.   Michael Hingson ** 29:05 Yeah, well, we, we all did and and didn't take too many chances. So it worked out pretty well. So you stayed in Allentown and you stayed with Air Products for how long   Scott Hanton ** 29:19 I was in Air Products for 20 years. So the analytical group that I was part of, we were about 92 or 93 people when I joined the company, when I just left after earning my PhD. After 20 years, that group was down to about 35 just progressive series of decisions that made the department smaller, and as the Department got smaller and smaller, we were worried about our abilities to sustain our work. And so a dear friend and a key colleague, Paula McDaniel, and I, worked to try to see what other kind of opportunities there were. Yeah. And so we reached out to a contract research organization called Intertech to see if they would be interested in maybe acquiring our analytical department. And when we called them, and by the way, we called them before we talked to our boss about it, she forgave us later, but when we called the guy on the end of the phone said, Wait a minute, let me get your file. And it's like, what you have a file on Air Products, analytical, really? Why? Well, it turned out that they had a file, and that they had an active Merger and Acquisition Group, and they wanted an integrated analytical department on the east coast of the US. And so we engaged in negotiation, and ultimately this analytical department was sold by Air Products to Intertech. So on Friday, we're a little cog in a giant engine of an global, international company, and our funding comes from Vice Presidents. And on Monday, we're a standalone business of 35 people, we need to write quotes in order to make money. So it was an enormous challenge to transition from a service organization to a business. But oh my goodness, did we learn a lot,   Michael Hingson ** 31:13 certainly a major paradigm shift,   Scott Hanton ** 31:18 and I was lucky that I lost the coin flip, and Paula won, and she said, I want to be business development director. And I said, thank God. So she went off to be the key salesperson, and Paula was utterly brilliant as a technical salesperson, and I became the operations manager, which allowed me to keep my hands dirty with the science and to work with the scientists and to build a system and a community that allowed us to be successful in a CRO world.   Michael Hingson ** 31:49 So at that time, when you became part, part of them, the new company, were you or the standalone business? Were you working in lab? Still yourself?   Scott Hanton ** 32:01 Yes. So I had the title Operations Manager and all of the scientific staff reported into me, but I was still the technical expert in some mass spectrometry techniques, particularly MALDI and also tough Sims, and so I still had hands on lab responsibility that I needed to deliver. And over time, I was able to train some people to take some of those responsibilities off. But when the weight of the world was particularly heavy, the place for me to go was in the lab and do some experiments.   Michael Hingson ** 32:34 Yeah, still so important to be able to keep your hand in into to know and understand. I know I had that same sort of need being the manager of an office and oftentimes working with other people who were the engineers, coming from a little bit of a technical background as well. I worked to always make sure I knew all I could about the products that I was dealing with and selling, and my sales people who worked for me constantly asked, How come, you know, all this stuff, and we don't then, my response always was, did you read the product bulletin that came out last week? Or have you kept up on the product bulletins? Because it's all right there, whether I actually physically repaired products or not, I knew how to do it. And so many times when I was involved in working with some of our engineers, I remember a few times our field support people, and we were working out of New Jersey, and then in New York at the time, in the World Trade Center, we had some customers up at Lockheed Martin, up in Syria, Rochester, I think it was. And the guys would go up, and then they'd call me on the phone, and we'd talk about it, and between us, we came up with some bright ideas. And I remember one day, all of a sudden, I get this phone call, and these guys are just bouncing off the walls, because whatever it was that was going on between them and me, we figured it out, and they put it in play and made it work, and they were all just as happy as clams at high tide, which is the way it ought to   Scott Hanton ** 34:13 be. It's great to work in a team that finds success. The longer I was in technical management, the more I enjoyed the success of the team. It didn't need to be my success anymore that helping the scientists be successful in their roles was truly satisfying,   Michael Hingson ** 34:33 and that helped you, by definition, be more successful in your role.   Scott Hanton ** 34:36 And no question, it could be seen as a selfish byproduct, but the fact is that it still felt really good.   Michael Hingson ** 34:43 Yeah, I hear you, because I know for me, I never thought about it as I've got to be successful. It's we've got problems to solve. Let's do it together. And I always told people that we're a team. And I have told every salesperson. I ever hired. I'm not here to boss you around. You've convinced me that you should be able to sell our products, and sometimes I found that they couldn't. But I said my job is to work with you to figure out how I can enhance what you do, and what skills do I bring to add value to you, because we've got to work together, and the people who understood that and who got it were always the most successful people that I ever had in my teams.   Scott Hanton ** 35:30 One of the things I strive to do as a leader of any organization is to understand the key strengths of the people on the team and to try to craft their roles in such a way that they spend the majority of their time executing their strengths. Yeah. I've also discovered that when I truly investigate poor performance, there's often a correlation between poor performance and people working in their weaknesses. Yeah, and if we can shift those jobs, change those roles, make change happen so that people can work more often in their strengths, then good things happen.   Michael Hingson ** 36:07 And if you can bring some of your skills into the mix and augment what they do, so much the better.   Scott Hanton ** 36:16 Yeah, because I'm just another member of the team, my role is different, but I need to also apply my strengths to the problems and be wary of my weaknesses, because as the leader of the organization, my words carried undue weight. Yeah, and if, if I was speaking or acting in a space where I was weak, people would still do what I said, because I had the most authority, and that was just a lose, lose proposition   Michael Hingson ** 36:43 by any standard. And and when you, when you operated to everyone's strengths, it always was a win. Yep, which is so cool. So you went to Intertech, and how long were you there?   Scott Hanton ** 36:57 I was at Intertech for 10 years, and work I can if you know, for any listeners out there who work in the CRO world, it is a tough business. It is a grind working in that business, yeah? So it was a lot of long hours and testy customers and shortages of materials and equipment that was a hard a hard a hard road to plow,   Michael Hingson ** 37:22 yeah, yeah, it gets to be frustrating. Sometimes it's what you got to do, but it still gets to be frustrating gets to be a challenge. The best part   Scott Hanton ** 37:32 for me was I had a great team. We had senior and junior scientists. They were good people. They worked hard. They fundamentally, they cared about the outcomes. And so it was a great group of people to work with. But the contract lab business is a tough business. Yeah, so when covid came, you know, the pandemic settles in, all the restrictions are coming upon us. I was tasked as the General Manager of the business with setting up all the protocols, you know, how are we going to meet the number of people this basing the masks, you know, how could we work with and we were essential as a lab, so we had to keep doing what we were doing. And it took me about a week to figure non stop work to figure out what our protocols were going to be, and the moment I turned them into my boss, then I got laid off. So what you want to do in a time of crisis is you want to let go of the the general manager, the safety manager, the quality manager and the Chief Scientist, because those are four people that you don't need during times of stress or challenge or crisis. On the plus side for me, getting laid off was a bad hour. It hurt my pride, but after an hour, I realized that all the things that I'd been stressing about for years trying to run this business were no longer my problem. Yeah, and I found that it was a tremendous weight lifted off my shoulders to not feel responsible for every problem and challenge that that business had.   Michael Hingson ** 39:14 And that's always a good blessing when you when you figure that out and don't worry about the the issues anymore. That's a good thing. It was certainly   Scott Hanton ** 39:25 good for me. Yeah, so I'm not going to recommend that people go get laid off. No world to get fired. But one problem that I had is because Paula and I worked to create that business, I sort of behaved like an owner, but was treated like an employee. And my recommendation to people is, remember, you're an employee, find some personal boundaries that protect you from the stress of the business, because you're not going to be rewarded or treated like an owner.   Michael Hingson ** 39:58 Yeah, because you're not because. Or not.   Scott Hanton ** 40:01 So I got laid off. It was in the height of the pandemic. So, you know, I'm too busy of a human being to sort of sit in a rocking chair and watch the birds fly by. That's not my style or my speed. So I started a consulting business, and that was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed doing the consulting work, but I learned something really important about myself, and that's that while I can sell and I can be an effective salesperson, I don't like selling, and as a company of one, when I didn't sell, I didn't make any money, yeah, and so I needed to figure out something else to do, because I really hated selling, and I wasn't doing it. I was procrastinating, and that made the business be unpredictable and very choppy   Michael Hingson ** 40:51 in that company of one, that guy who was working for you wasn't really doing all that you wanted.   Scott Hanton ** 40:56 Exactly the Yeah, you know me as the founder, was giving me as the salesman, a poor performance review was not meeting objectives. So I had a long time volunteer relationship with lab manager magazine. I had been writing articles for them and speaking for them in webinars and in conferences for a long time, probably more than 10 years, I would say, and they asked me as a consultant to produce a a to a proposal to create the lab manager Academy. So the the founder and owner of the the company, the lab X Media Group, you really saw the value of an academy, and they needed it done. They needed it done. They couldn't figure it out themselves. So I wrote the proposal. I had a good idea of how to do it, but I was new to consulting, and I struggled with, how do I get paid for this? And I had four ideas, but I didn't like them, so I slept on it, and in the morning I had a fifth, which said, hire me full time. I sent in the proposal. An hour later, I had a phone call. A week later, I had a job, so that worked out fantastic. And I've really enjoyed my time at lab manager magazine. Great people, fun work. It's really interesting to me to be valued for what I know rather than for what I can do. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 42:23 the two relate. But still, it does need to be more about what you know, what you really bring, as opposed to what you can do, because what you can do in general probably is an offshoot of what you know.   Scott Hanton ** 42:38 So this gives me the opportunity to help lots of people. So on the outside of the company, I'm writing articles, creating courses, giving talks to help lab managers. Because I was a lab manager for a long time, yeah, over 20 years, and I know what those challenges are. I know how hard that job is, and I know how many decisions lab managers need to make, and it's wonderful to be able to share my experience and help them, and I am motivated to help them. So was it hard? Oh, go ahead, on the inside, I'm literally an internal subject matter expert, and so I can coach and teach and help my colleagues with what's the science? What do lab managers really think? How do we pitch this so that it resonates with lab managers, and I think that helps make all of our products better and more successful.   Michael Hingson ** 43:31 So was it hard? Well, I guess best way to put it is that, was it really hard to switch from being a scientist to being a lab manager and then going into being a subject matter expert and really out of the laboratory. So   Scott Hanton ** 43:48 people ask me all the time, Scott, don't you miss being in the lab and doing experiments? And my answer is, I miss being in the lab. And I do miss being in the lab. You know, on very stressful days at Intertech, I'd go in the lab and I'd do an experiment, yeah, because it was fun, and I had more control over the how the experiment was run and what I would learn from it than I did running a business. But the flip side of that is, I do experiments all the time. What I learned as the general manager of a business was the scientific method works. Let's data hypothesis. Let's figure out how to test it. Let's gather data, and let's see if the hypothesis stands or falls. And we ran a business that way, I think, pretty successfully. And even now, in in media and publishing, we still run experiments all the time. And it's kind of funny that most of my editorial colleagues that I work with, they think my favorite word is experiment. My favorite word is still why, but we talk all the time now about doing experiments, and that was a new thing for them, but now we can do continual improvement more in a more dedicated way, and we do it a lot faster. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 45:00 yeah. So what's the hardest thing you think about being a lab manager?   Scott Hanton ** 45:06 I think the hardest thing about let me answer that with two. I'm not going to be able to narrow it down to one, so I'll give you two. The first one is you transform, maybe one day to the next, from really being in control of your science and working with whether it's animals or rocks or electrons or chemicals, whatever you're working with, having a great degree of knowledge and a lot of control, and the next day, you're hurting cats. And so it's about that transition from having control over your destiny to influencing people to get the work done, and working with people instead of working with experiments, that's really hard. The second is, as a lab manager, there's endless decisions, and so combating decision fatigue is a big deal, and everybody in the lab depends upon you for the decisions you make. And it's not that every decision has to be perfect, you know, that's just a different failure mode if you try to make perfect decisions, but every decision needs to be made promptly. And as a scientist, I could always make more data in order to make a better decision, but as a lab manager, I would often only have maybe 40 or 50% of the data I wanted, and a decision had to be made. And getting comfortable making decisions in the face of uncertainty is really hard.   Michael Hingson ** 46:29 So certainly, being a lab manager or Well, dealing with managers in the way we're talking about it here, has to be very stressful. How do you how do you cope with the stress?   Scott Hanton ** 46:42 So I think ways to cope with the stress successfully is, first of all, you've got to take care of yourself. You know, we've all flown on airplanes, and what is the safety person in the aisle or on the video? Do oxygen masks will fall from the ceiling, and what do we do with them? We put them on before we help somebody else, right? We all know that. But in the workplace, especially as a manager, it's hard to remember that as we care for our team and try and take care of our team, there might not be enough time or energy or capacity left to take care of ourselves, but if we don't fill that gas tank every day doing something, then we can't help our team. And so one way to deal with the stress is to make sure that you take care of yourself. So   Michael Hingson ** 47:28 what do you do? How do you deal with that? So   Scott Hanton ** 47:31 for me, ways that I can reinvigorate is one. I like being outside and get my hands dirty. So I'm not really a gardener, but I call myself a yard dinner. So I grow grass and I grow flowers, and I trim trees, and I want to go outside, and I want to see immediate return on my effort, and I want it to be better than when I started. And it's good if I have to clean from under my fingernails when I'm doing it. Another thing I like to do is I play all kinds of games I'm happy to play, sorry, with little kids, or I'll play complicated strategy games with people who want to sit at a table for three or four hours at a time. Yeah? And that allows my brain to spin and to work but on something completely different. Yeah. And another thing that's been important for me, especially when I was a lab manager is to be involved in youth coaching, so I coached kids soccer and basketball and baseball teams, and it's just beautiful to be out there on a field with a ball, with kids. And you know, the worries of the world just aren't there. The kids don't know anything about them. And it's fun to work with the ones who are really good, but it's equally fun to work with the ones who have never seen the ball before, and to help them do even the most basic things. And that kind of giving back and paying it forward, that sort of stuff fills my tank.   Michael Hingson ** 48:51 Yeah, I empathize a lot with with that. For me, I like to read. I've never been much of a gardener, but I also collect, as I mentioned before, old radio shows, and I do that because I'm fascinated by the history and all the things I learned from what people did in the 2030s, 40s and 50s, being on radio, much Less getting the opportunity to learn about the technical aspects of how they did it, because today it's so different in terms of how one edits, how one processes and deals with sounds and so on, but it's but it's fun to do something just totally different than way maybe what your normal Job would be, and and I do love to interact with with people. I love to play games, too. I don't get to do nearly as much of it as I'd like, but playing games is, is a lot of fun,   Scott Hanton ** 49:52 and I agree, and it it's fun, it's diverting, it's it helps me get into a flow so that I'm focused on. Me on one thing, and I have no idea how much time has gone by, and I don't really care. You know, people who play games with me might question this. I don't really care if I win or lose. Certainly I want to win, but it's more important to me that I play well, and if somebody plays better, good for   Michael Hingson ** 50:14 them, great. You'll learn from it. Exactly. Do you play   Scott Hanton ** 50:18 chess? I have played chess. I've played a lot of chess. What I've learned with chess is that I'm not an excellent I'm a good player, but not an excellent player. And when I run into excellent players, they will beat me without even breaking a sweat.   Michael Hingson ** 50:34 And again, in theory, you learn something from that.   Scott Hanton ** 50:37 What I found is that I don't really want to work that hard and yeah. And so by adding an element of chance or probability to the game, the people who focus on chess, where there are known answers and known situations, they get thrown off by the uncertainty of the of the flip the card or roll the dice. And my brain loves that uncertainty, so I tend to thrive. Maybe it's from my time in the lab with elements of uncertainty, where the chess players wilt under elements of uncertainty, and it's again, it's back to our strengths, right? That's something that I'm good at, so I'm gonna go do it. I've   Michael Hingson ** 51:20 always loved Trivial Pursuit. That's always been a fun game that I enjoy playing. I   Scott Hanton ** 51:25 do love Trivial Pursuit. I watch Jeopardy regularly. A funny story, when we moved into our new house in Pennsylvania, it was a great neighborhood. Loved the neighbors there. When we first moved in, they invited my wife and I to a game night. Excellent. We love games. We're going to play Trivial Pursuit. Awesome like Trivial Pursuit. We're going to play as couples. Bad idea, right? Let's play boys against the girls, or, let's say, random draws. No, we're playing as couples. Okay, so we played as couples. Helen and I won every game by a large margin. We were never invited back for game night. Yeah, invited back for lots of other things, but not game night.   Michael Hingson ** 52:06 One of the things that, and I've talked about it with people on this podcast before, is that all too often, when somebody reads a question from a trivial pursuit card, an answer pops in your head, then you went, Oh, that was too easy. That can't be the right answer. So you think about it, and you answer with something else, but invariably, that first answer was always the correct answer.   Scott Hanton ** 52:32 Yes, I'm I have learned to trust my intuition. Yeah. I learned, as a research scientist, that especially in talking to some of my peers, who are very dogmatic, very step by step scientists. And they lay out the 20 steps to that they felt would be successful. And they would do one at a time, one through 20. And that made them happy for me, I do one and two, and then I'd predict where that data led me, and I do experiment number seven, and if it worked, I'm off to eight. And so I they would do what, one step at a time, one to 20, and I'd sort of do 127, 1420, yeah. And that I learned that that intuition was powerful and valuable, and I've learned to trust it. And in my lab career, it served me really well. But also as a manager, it has served me well to trust my intuition, and at least to listen to it. And if I need to analyze it, I can do that, but I'm going to listen to it,   Michael Hingson ** 53:31 and that's the important thing, because invariably, it's going to give you useful information, and it may be telling you not what to do, but still trusting it and listening to it is so important, I've found that a lot over the years,   Scott Hanton ** 53:47 Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called Blink, where he talks about the power of the subconscious, and his claim is that the subconscious is 100,000 times smarter than our conscious brain, and I think when we are trusting our intuition, we're tapping into that super computer that's in our skulls. If you want to learn more, read blank. It's a great story.   Michael Hingson ** 54:10 I hear you. I agree. How can people learn to be better leaders and managers?   Scott Hanton ** 54:18 So I think it's there's really three normal ways that people do this. One is the power of experiment, right? And I did plenty of that, and I made tons of errors. It's painful. It's irritating, trial and error, but I used to tell people at Intertech that I was the general manager because I'd made the most mistakes, which gave me the most opportunity to learn. It was also partly because a lot of my peers wanted nothing to do with the job. You know, they wanted to be scientists. Another way is we, we get coached and mentored by people around us, and that is awesome if you have good supervisors, and it's tragic if you have bad supervisors, because you don't know any better and you take for granted. That the way it's been done is the way it needs to be done, and that prevents us from being generative leaders and questioning the status quo. So there's problems there, too. And I had both good and bad supervisors during my career. I had some awful, toxic human beings who were my supervisors, who did damage to me, and then I had some brilliant, caring, empathetic people who raised me up and helped me become the leader that I am today. So it's a bit of a crap shoot. The third way is go out and learn it from somebody who's done it right, and that's why we generated the lab manager Academy to try to codify all the mistakes I made and what are the learnings from them? And when I'm talking with learners who are in the program, it's we have a huge positive result feedback on our courses. And what I talk to people about who take our courses is I'm glad you appreciate what we've put together here. That makes me feel good. I'm glad it's helping you. But when these are my mistakes and the answers to my mistakes, when you make mistakes, you need to in the future, go make some courses and teach people what the lessons were from your mistakes and pay it forward. Yeah. So I recommend getting some training.   Michael Hingson ** 56:17 What's the difference between management and leadership?   Scott Hanton ** 56:21 I particularly love a quote from Peter Drucker. So Peter Drucker was a professor in California. You may have heard of him before.   Michael Hingson ** 56:29 I have. I never had the opportunity to meet him, but I read.   Scott Hanton ** 56:34 I didn't either material. I've read his books, and I think he is an insightful human being, yes. So the quote goes like this, management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things. So as a technical manager, there's a bunch of things we have to get right. We have to get safety right. We have to get quality right. There's an accuracy and precision that we need to get right for our outcomes and our results. Those are management tasks, but leadership is about doing the right things. And the interesting thing about that definition is it doesn't require a title or a role or any level of authority. So anyone can be a leader if you're consistently doing the right things, you are exhibiting leadership, and that could be from the person sweeping the floors or the person approving the budget, or anyone in between.   Michael Hingson ** 57:33 Yeah, I've heard that quote from him before, and absolutely agree with it. It makes a whole lot of sense.   Scott Hanton ** 57:41 Other definitions that I've seen trying to distinguish management and leadership tend to use the words manage and lead, and I don't like definitions that include the words that they're trying to define. They become circular at some level. This one, I think, is clear about it, what its intention is, and for me, it has worked through my career, and so the separation is valuable. I have authority. I'm the manager. I have accountability to get some stuff right, but anyone can lead, and everyone can lead, and the organization works so much better when it's full of leaders   Michael Hingson ** 58:21 and leaders who are willing to recognize when they bring something to the table, or if someone else can add value in ways that they can't, to be willing to let the other individual take the leadership position for a while.   Scott Hanton ** 58:40 Absolutely, and you know that really comes down to building an environment and a culture that's supportive. And so Amy Edmondson has written extensively on the importance of psychological safety, and that psychological safety hinges on what you just said, right? If the guy who sweeps the floor has an observation about the organization. Do they feel safe to go tell the person in charge that this observation, and if they feel safe, and if that leader is sufficiently vulnerable and humble to listen with curiosity about that observation, then everybody benefits, yeah, and the more safe everyone feels. We think about emotion. Emotional safety is they anyone can bring their best self to work, and psychological safety is they can contribute their ideas and observations with no threat of retaliation, then we have an environment where we're going to get the best out of everybody, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 59:46 which is the way it it really ought to be. And all too often we don't necessarily see it, but that is the way it ought   Scott Hanton ** 59:53 to be. Too many people are worried about credit, or, I don't know, worried about things that I don't see. Yeah, and they waste human potential, right? They they don't open their doors to hire anybody. They they judge people based on what they look like instead of who they are, or they box people in into roles, and don't let them flourish and Excel. And whenever you're doing those kinds of things, you're wasting human potential. And businesses, science and business are too hard to waste human potential. We need to take advantage of everything that people are willing to give. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:33 we've been doing this for quite a while already today. So I'm going to ask as a kind of a last question, what, what advice do you want to leave for people to think about going forward in their lives and in their careers?   Scott Hanton ** 1:00:48 So I was participating in a LinkedIn chat today where a professor was asking the question, what sort of advice would you wish you got when you were 21 Okay, so it was an interesting thread, and there was one contributor to the thread who said something I thought was particularly valuable. And she said, attitude matters. Attitude matters. We can't control what happens to us, but we can control how we deal with it and how we respond, right? And so I think if we can hold our attitude as our accountability, and we can direct our strengths and our talents to applying them against the challenges that the business or the science or the lab or the community faces, and we can go in with some positive attitude and positive desire for for change and improvement, and we can be vulnerable and humble enough to accept other people's ideas and to interact through discussion and healthy debate. Then everything's better. I also like Kelleher his quote he was the co founder of Southwest Airlines, and he said, when you're hiring, hire for attitude, train for skill. Attitude is so important. So I think, understand your attitude. Bring the attitude you want, the attitude you value, the attitude that's that's parallel to your core values. And then communicate to others about their attitude and how it's working or not working for them.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:31 And hopefully, if they have a positive or good enough attitude, they will take that into consideration and grow because of it absolutely   Scott Hanton ** 1:02:41 gives everybody the chance to be the best they can be.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:47 Well, Scott, this has been wonderful. If people want to reach out to you, how can they do that?   Scott Hanton ** 1:02:51 So LinkedIn is great. I've provided Michael my LinkedIn connection. So I would love to have people connect to me on LinkedIn or email. S Hanson at lab manager.com love to have interactions with the folks out there.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:08 Well, I want to thank you for spending so much time. We'll have to do more of this.   Scott Hanton ** 1:03:13 Michael, I really enjoyed it. This was a fun conversation. It was stimulating. You asked good questio

APAC stocks traded with a mostly negative bias after a similar performance among global peers.European equity futures indicate a positive cash market open with Euro Stoxx 50 future up 0.2% after the cash market closed with gains of 0.3%.FX markets are contained, EUR/USD sits on a 1.15 handle, USD/JPY maintains its footing above the 148 mark.Bund futures lacked direction overnight. Crude futures were little changed but held on to most of the prior day's spoils.Looking ahead, highlights include Spanish GDP Estimate, US Advance Goods Trade Balance, Wholesale Inventories Advance, Consumer Confidence, Dallas Fed Services Revenues, Atlanta Fed GDPNow, ECB SCE, Supply from UK, Germany & US.Earnings from AstraZeneca, Barclays, Unite, L'Oreal, Air Liquide, Orange, Kering, Banca Generali, Terna, Endesa, Grifols, Visa, Marathon Digital, Starbucks, Booking, UnitedHealth, Sofi, Paypal, UPS, Spotify, Merck, Nucor, JetBlue, Procter & Gamble.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

European bourses are broadly in the green, alongside strength in US futures ahead of a busy earnings slate.USD is firmer, EUR/USD's descent continues as markets digest the EU-US trade agreement.USTs await data and a 7yr auction, Bunds are on the backfoot giving back some of the prior day's upside.Crude resumes upside while metals are hampered by the Dollar.Looking ahead, highlights include US JOLTS Job Openings, Advance Goods Trade Balance, Wholesale Inventories Advance, Consumer Confidence, Dallas Fed Services Revenues, Atlanta Fed GDPNow, ECB SCE, Supply from the US, Earnings from Kering, Banca Generali, Terna, Grifols, Visa, Marathon Digital, Starbucks, Booking, UnitedHealth, Sofi, Paypal, UPS, Spotify, Merck, Nucor, JetBlue, Procter & Gamble.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Story at-a-glance Merck's respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) shot clesrovimab (Enflonsia) was approved even though 11.71% of babies in the trial experienced serious adverse events, including seizures, brain injury, and death Infants who got clesrovimab had a 350% higher risk of upper respiratory infections — exactly the type of illness this shot claims to prevent The injection is given in a single, fixed dose regardless of infant weight, putting smaller, younger babies at greater risk due to disproportionately high exposure Babies who received the shot had a threefold increase in severe neurological reactions compared to those given a placebo Only about 25 babies in the U.S. succumb to RSV each year, making the known risks of clesrovimab far outweigh the threat the virus poses to most children

Justin Abrams is the founder and CEO of the Aryo Consulting Group. For the past 12 years Justin and his team have helped hundreds of organizations around the world…from some of the most iconic global companies like Sony and Merck to some of the newest, fastest growing companies…create inflection points that fuel remarkable growth. Justin specializes in helping companies stimulate flat or falling sales, and move away from tired old playbooks that “used to work.” Every sales leader has a responsibility to have modern approaches for modern sales challenges. And today, Justin joins us and shares how some of the most successful teams in the world do exactly that. This is a timely message as leaders make 2nd half adjustments for the 2025 year. You can connect with Justin on LinkedIn here. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-abrams-aryo-consulting/) You can check out Aryo here (https://aryocg.com/). For video excerpts of this and other episodes of the Sales Leadership Podcast, check out Sales Leadership United Here. (https://www.patreon.com/c/SalesLeadershipUnited)

In this episode of Decoding Destiny: Navigating Breast Cancer with Genetic Insight, I'm joined by Dena Goldberg, board-certified genetic counselor and founder of Malibu Genetics. We talk about the critical role genetic counselors play in assessing breast cancer risk, and how genetic testing can guide treatment and preventive care. Dena also shares how she supports patients through the emotional impact of receiving test results—and how understanding your genetic risk can be both empowering and life-saving. We also look ahead at the future of genetic testing, including the promise of population screening and the ongoing push for more equitable access. Listen now to learn how genetic counseling can help you and your loved ones make informed, proactive decisions about breast cancer risk.  Special thanks to AstraZeneca and Merck for making this episode possible.

In this episode, Michael D. Levitt sits down with Justin, founder of Aryo Consulting Group, to unpack small businesses' real-world challenges in today's fast-paced economy. With a track record of helping over 350 companies—ranging from scrappy startups to established enterprises—Justin brings practical insight into what works (and what doesn't) when scaling a business.

Carl Quintanilla and Jim Cramer covered all of the bases on a historic day for Nvidia: The chipmaker became the first company to achieve a $4 trillion valuation. Hear what Jim had to say about what's ahead for the stock. Also in focus: Apple's Jeff Williams to step down as COO, copper tariffs and what they could mean for Tesla, UnitedHealth and the DOJ, Merck's $10 billion deal to acquire Verona Pharma, President Trump's 200% pharma tariff threat. Squawk on the Street Disclaimer

Del and Jefferey dive into the troubling numbers behind Merck's new RSV shot for infants, recently greenlit by the FDA. Trial data revealed higher rates of deaths and severe respiratory illness in vaccinated babies, yet the FDA overlooked this concerning trial data.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.